


No Way Out

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Gen, Kidnapping, Nominated for the 2015 Profiler's Choice Awards Best Case/Team, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Psychological Trauma, Team Dynamics, Teamwork, The BAU being badasses, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their greatest strength lies in their team.</p><p>Trapped in a labyrinth of deadly passages and traps designed to emulate their greatest fears, the members of the BAU have to find each other if they have any hope of finding their escape.</p><p>But as, one by one, they start falling, will the ones that are left be able to survive alone?</p><p>---</p><p>
  <strong> Nominated for the 2015 Profiler's Choice Awards - Best Team/Casefic </strong>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All Those Who Wander

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to greeneyedconstellations for her marvellous help with beta'ing this piece! All remaining mistakes are mine.

Aaron Hotchner closed his eyes in his own home with the soft sound of rain pattering against the windows and opened them in a four by four cell with no recollection of the time in-between. The air stunk of mildew and rot, the cement icy under his bare skin. When he twitched his fingers and considered the abrupt turn his night had taken, they were sluggish to respond to his cues, swollen, numb, chilled by the frigid air.

In that frozen, silent room, he struggled to climb to his feet and observe his surroundings: door, automatic, no handle; intercom beside the door, humming; a large number **5** stencilled to the concrete floor; and, behind him on the wall… Hotch turned and stared, processing the image that took up the entirety of that bizarrely clean surface.

Well, _shit_.

 

* * *

 

Henry coughed hoarsely, face flushed and hair lank against his sweaty forehead. Jennifer Jareau ran a worried hand over his skin and smiled reassuringly at her son as her own head throbbed with tension.

“He okay?” Will called as she slipped out Henry’s room and closed the door. Padding towards their bedroom, she found him curled on top of the covers, blinking fast as though struggling to stay awake. She frowned at the groggy downturn to his mouth, his eyelids heavily lidded. It would be just their luck if he came down sick too.

“He’ll be fine,” she replied. Her hand shook against the doorframe, trying to hold her upright as her head throbbed harder and fractured her focus. She was sure that she must have stood too quickly, moved too fast… but it kept going and going and going and she tipped—

She woke up alone.

 

* * *

 

Derek Morgan leaned over the dog sprawled limply on the kitchen floor. “Clooney? What’s wrong with you?” he tried, before whistling piercingly at him, concern racketing up when the dog’s ear didn’t even flick at the sound. _Ah hell,_ he thought, leaping up with the intention of bolting to his cell and calling the emergency vet.

But his feet slipped out from under him. He found himself sprawling, one hand on the ground, one hand heavy on his dog’s warm side, the tiles bitterly cold against bare legs. As his head lolled on a neck that had somehow forgotten how to support it, someone moved into his field of vision. Their form blurred and wavered with his awareness, dipping and weaving out of focus.

“The hell you do to my dog?” he tried to snarl, managing to lift his hand and brush it against a stiff material in a last-ditch effort at self-defence. He wasn’t even sure if he’d actually managed the words before the world slipped away from him.

 

* * *

 

David Rossi studied the map splayed across the wall of his prison. _No point panicking and wasting time,_ he rationalized. _Just breathe, plan, and the team will find you._ The map was concerning, though. It was clearly a blueprint of a building: a seven-sided shape with a labyrinth of passages and rooms leading through it. Rossi eyed it, suddenly praying hard that it was merely the odd decorative choice of a demented mind and not the blueprints of an actual building.

An actual building that he was in right now.

_Although,_ he supposed as he examined the large number **1** on the floor below, _an actual building would make for a good book._

* * *

 

Penelope Garcia worked in IT and nothing spookier for a reason. Watching her friends run towards danger day in and day out like a litter of particularly heroic kittens was enough excitement for her—being kidnapped and shoved into a tiny cell was known as _way too much excitement, thank you very much_. Especially when she was still in her nightie. Especially when she was still the littlest bit drunk from the half-off cocktails at ladies night and a little bit stressed because she couldn’t remember walking home and absolutely _freezing_ in her nightie that was great on the shelf at half-off but not so good at being warm when imprisoned, apparently.

Of course, her kidnapping was the least of her worries. More worrisome concerns were curled up on the icky cement floor in front of her, still snoozing from the aftereffects of whatever the sicko had given them before dumping them all here. Garcia blinked back frantic tears and looked around, hoping for something, anything, that she could use to escape. Because she couldn’t count on the team being able to save her this time. She didn’t even know if they were still alive.

One thing she knew: if Jack Hotchner and Henry LaMontagne were locked in this icy hole of a cell with her, what had the exactly had their kidnapper done to their parents?

 

* * *

 

Of everyone on the team, Spencer Reid probably had the most experience with being drugged and waking up alone in strange and frightening locations. He certainly had the most experience with vanishing off the face of the earth without warning. Fortunately, he was also probably the most qualified to deal with what he could tell at a glance was going to be a positively hellish labyrinth to escape.

He eyed the map carefully, mouth moving silently as he memorised each and every turn and noted symbols on the map that denoted some sort of landmark— _what though?_ —and the measurements of each area.

Spatially, it was simple: three concentric circles in a seven-sided figure, thirty-six visual landmarks indicated by green dots, twenty-five possible routes to the centre.

Timeframe to reach the centre: maximum, assuming he took the longest path and it was a level plane, ninety minutes, supposing the cell was to scale. Minimum, approximately an hour, but that would heavily depend on being lucky and despite being born in Vegas, he’d never learned to trust in luck.

Of course, this was all assuming that the simplicity of the maze was from design and not in order to lead him into a variety of, no doubt, really nasty traps. And it was assuming that his cell was the one denoted by the symbol **7** on the map—which seemed obvious really, considering the number on the floor, but he didn’t trust in assumptions either.

But he was doing an awful lot of assuming.

It struck him suddenly that if he was here and there were eight other cells also denoted at each vertex of the figure, then he probably wasn’t here alone. Which added a whole pile of unpredictable confounds to his calculations of the likelihood of escaping unharmed.

But he shoved that thought into the ‘to be worried about after compiling a plan’ pile. There’d be time for panic later.

 

* * *

 

Emily didn’t remember going to bed, and she certainly didn’t remember going to bed in a nicely contained little prison cell with a yellow **8** painted onto the cement floor beneath her. “Fucking fuck,” said Emily, because it felt like an appropriate time to say so, unfolding her legs with painful twin cracks and staggering upright. “Fuck,” she added, looking down and realizing she was wearing nothing but an oversized Doctor Who shirt and men’s boxers, her skin goose-pimped against the chill. Just the chill. Not anything like _fear_.

Except the problem with being trained to get inside serial killers’ heads was that she was trained to get inside serial killers’ heads, and she had absolutely no doubt that whatever was in store for them was going to be nasty, painful, messy, and probably pretentiously dramatic. And if her team were in here with her—she realized that she was running on the assumption that her team was here with her—then there was no one out there that she trusted to save her silk-clad ass.

On the bright side, that meant that everyone she trusted was in place to save her silk-clad ass, figuring that they could find each other and make a plan. But if the numbers were cells, she was eight, and she assumed that the team was also here—including Garcia, and god no, please don’t be Garcia—then that was only seven. Who the hell else was here with them?

 

* * *

 

_“Hello?”_ said the intercom in a voice that was unexpectedly familiar. _“What the fuck is going on, you sicko? Where the **hell** am I?”_

Hotch pressed down on the button to talk. “Greenaway?” he asked, sure he had to be mistaken, but there was no mistaking the soft accent that replied, “Hotch? Aaron Hotchner?”

There was silence on the other end, then a hissing intake of air and a large amount of what he guessed was very inventive swearing in Spanish followed. _“You know, me quitting means I’m not being paid to be kidnapped by lunatics anymore!”_

“Sorry,” Hotch whispered, because what else could he say?

The intercom crackled. _“If I were you, I’d start running,”_ it announced, silencing them both.

The door hummed, and opened.


	2. The Best Laid Plans

Focusing was more important than allowing himself to be frightened. Reid ignored the ominous announcement over the intercom, choosing to narrow his attention to the map and commit every detail to memory. Left, left, left, right, straight ahead for five turns, left again, then one of those green spots… it was too easy. If he followed the shortest path, it was far too easy.

“It’s a labyrinth,” Reid murmured, tilting his head and squinting to blur out the narrow lines that denoted the smaller rooms. What was left was a… spiral. A spiral path, leading around the building in a complex pattern before culminating in the centre. He could see the way, and see how it was completely unintuitive and involved backtracking several times to avoid suspicious turns in the path. Would his team see it? Or would they take the clearer paths, not seeing the possible dangers? He had to find them before they chanced it.

_“Hello?”_ crackled a familiar voice. Reid jumped. His shoes squeaked on the polished concrete as he whirled around to face the intercom. The voice came again: _“Hey, we can talk through these things! Is anyone listening? Someone better be fuckin’ listening!”_

“Emily?” Reid said stupidly, stepping forward to press the button next to the speaker. “Emily! You’re here too?” He adjusted his assumptions: if Emily was here, he doubted the other cells contained random victims. The stakes had just doubled.

_“Fuck. Reid. You have no idea how much I really didn’t want to hear your voice right now. What the hell is going on?”_

Reid shook his head, forgetting in his distraction that she wouldn’t be able to see him. “Forget that, we might not have time to talk long. It’s not a maze, so don’t take the direct path. It’s a labyrinth.”

She laughed drily, the sound distorted by the connection. _“There’s a difference?”_

Now was probably not quite the time to slip into ‘lecture’ mode. In any case, he wanted Emily to be on his side when they found each other. “Labyrinths spiral. I think if we take the easy paths that he wants us to take, they’ll be dead ends.”

_“Or traps.”_

Or traps. He’d been considering the potential for traps, but not quite to the extent that he was willing to voice his thoughts. Pitfalls, trip wires, electrical circuits… as mentally stimulating as considering the possibilities were, it ceased being stimulating when he realized his team would be running that gauntlet—possibly alone, possibly unprepared, possibly—

_“We need to gather the team,”_ Emily continued, her voice moving away as though she’d turned to stare at the map. And there was something to add to his confidence in the theory that the team were the other captives: Emily believed it too. _“Are these numbers our locations? What’s the best way out? Where are you?”_

Without needing look at the map, he knew the answer. “I’m cell seven. If I pass through the third corridor along the outside of the third ring, I can move straight and hopefully find everyone from there. There’s a few of those marks on that path as well, landmarks, I think.”

_“Or something worse. I’m eight. We’re next to each other then. How do I get to you?”_

He rattled off a list of instructions twice, getting her to repeat them back to him. “When you get to the last fork, stay there. Don’t enter any rooms that aren’t marked as corridors and don’t move without me reaching you. I’m going to detour to see what those marks are.”

_“Is that a good idea?”_

Yes. No. Most probably not. “If we’re talking to each other, I can only assume everyone can contact one other person. Maybe there are more intercoms and they’ll let us reach the rest of the team—I have to check.”

_“Why you? I can go.”_

He didn’t need to tell her why that was a bad idea. They were both vividly aware that the only one likely to get through this maze from memory was _him_ , especially taking detours, _especially_ if there were traps. The question slipped out before he could hold it back and it sounded disgustingly needy even to himself: “Do you think everyone is okay?”

_“Oh Spencer,”_ she said softly. _“They’re fine. Where’s the fun in hurting them before the game begins?_ _But there are eight cells, Reid. How are there eight? Hotch, Morgan, Rossi, you, me, JJ…”_ Her voice faltered over JJ, as though she had imagined the petite woman alone and hurt and—

His voice cracked as he veered away from that thought: “Garcia.”

_“That’s seven.”_ Emily smoothly moved past the horror of that statement. _“Who’s the eighth?”_

Reid’s heart skipped with what almost felt like a sick kind of hope. Could it… he _was_ one of the best and if this unsub was motivated by revenge, revenge against _them_ , why wouldn’t he go after the man who’d _founded_ them?

“I have no idea,” Reid’s mouth said, while his mind screamed, _Gideon._

* * *

 

_“Who am I speaking to?”_ The voice emanating from the intercom was heart-breakingly familiar. JJ felt the shaking in her limbs ease, even as a dull sort of horror spread throughout her as she realized that she wasn’t alone in this hell.

“Morgan,” she replied in a whisper, trying to hide the way fear was making her voice crack. “What’s going on? How did this happen?”

Morgan growled at the sound of her voice; she considered that he hadn’t been expecting to hear her either. _“Ah, shit JJ. You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here.”_

“What number are you?” she asked, ignoring the way his breath had taken on a stressed kind of hiss at the realization that he wasn’t the only one in danger. They needed to put their heads together to make a plan and not get distracted by the knowledge that the rest of their team were probably trapped here as well—oh god, did that mean that Spencer was somewhere in these dark corridors, _alone?_

_“Two.”_

Christ. She was six. They were so far away from each other. Endless rooms and corridors separated them, and JJ didn’t delude herself on her ability to remember a pathway through the maze. “It looks like we can get to each other fairly easily if we pass through the smaller rooms and avoid the winding corridors…” She trailed off, suddenly wishing that Spencer was standing next to her with his usual keen-eyed brilliance. Why would the unsub create paths for them to travel that would lead to each other so easily? Could be a trap? Or just bad design?

And how would they know unless they tried?

_“We need Reid,”_ muttered Morgan, and JJ’s facial muscles gave an involuntary twitch at the awareness that their minds were on the same track. _“The kid’s probably already out of here.”_

“We could stay put and wait for him to find us,” she said, no doubt in her mind that getting to them would be the first thing that Spence would focus on.

_“Except he won’t. He’ll assume we’ve all moved out into the maze,”_ Morgan argued, _“and try to guess which paths we’ve taken. Shit, we need to be able to communicate. We’re planning blind.”_

“We can move towards each other…”

_“And miss each other in the dark? We’d end up completely lost. The best way is to take the most direct route to the middle and not risk losing our bearings.”_ Morgan had his command voice on, and she knew there was no point arguing. _“Those green dots? Work your way towards the closest one to you as directly as you can. Hopefully they’re more maps, and we can go from one to another.”_

“And if they’re not?” She was suddenly aware that this was the go plan, which meant any moment now she was going to have to step away from the intercom, from Morgan’s voice, and away from the relative safety of her cell.

She’d be alone.

_“We’ll deal with that then. We gotta move, JJ. We need to catch the others.”_ She could hear the same hesitation in his voice, the same fierce desire to stay in contact.

“Morgan,” she said quietly, moving closer to the intercom.

_“Yeah?”_

“Be careful. Oh god, please, _please_ be careful, Derek.”

She heard a heavy breath and a soft crackle as though Morgan had leaned a hand against the wall against the microphone. _“You too, Jen. We’ll see each other soon. I promise.”_

* * *

 

_“Move to the green markers, they’re our only landmarks. Go clockwise, I’ll come towards you, and we should meet at the fifth marker. Can you do that?”_ Hotch’s voice was composed and concise, and Elle would never, ever admit how calming it was. Although she could barely think for the absurdity of this situation, somehow part of her brain still remembered how to listen to Hotch.

“Yes. I can do that. I’m no Reid, but I’ve done my fair share of cereal box mazes in my life.” She tried for a teasing tone and received no response. She should have remembered what a stick in the mud he was. Didn’t he know humour was a coping mechanism?

_“Greenaway,”_ he said sternly, and she rolled her eyes at the speaker. _“You need to be careful. Don’t be rash out there. Our first priority is regrouping and finding the others, and then we escape. Think before you act.”_

He still didn’t trust her judgement. Perhaps he was right not to. “Of course, Hotch. We’ll be fine. We’ve taken on smarter men than this guy.” She swore softly as a thought hit her. “ _Gilipollas,_ bastard! Who will feed my cat while I’m running like a rat through his maze?” A quiet inhalation on the other end reminded her that she wasn’t the only one with responsibilities that they’d been abruptly torn away from. “Ahh, Hotch. I’m sorry. I’m sure Haley will explain to Jack that you’ll be home soon, once you’ve dealt with the bad guy…”

_“Yes,”_ Hotch said shortly, and there was pain in that one word that took her breath away. _“Good luck. Stay safe.”_

“See you at the finish line, Boss.”

He still didn’t laugh.

 

* * *

 

“Please, please, you can’t expect me to go out there with two scared kids! How can you expect that of me? You’re not a monster, I know you’re not a monster, this isn’t a game, please!” Garcia winced, hearing Henry’s sniffles ramp up in intensity behind her, broken by his hoarse coughs. Jack was consoling his younger friend with one arm around his shoulder, watching Garcia with wide, dark eyes that were so much like his father’s it hurt.

_“Garcia?”_ cut in a voice from the other end as soon as she’d stopped her panicked rambling to take a breath. _“Garcia, it’s Rossi. What’s going on? What kids? Where are you? Breathe, just breathe.”_

_Rossi_. Oh, she could _hug_ the man. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever been this glad to hear his smooth lilt before. “Sir, if you were here in front of me right now I would not be held responsible for my actions,” she gasped, relief making her head spin.

“Uncle Dave?” Jack piped up, voice unsteady despite his outwardly calm demeanour. Garcia glanced at him, not liking the pallor to his skin or the way Henry’s shaking had become more like uncontrolled shudders.

_“Jack?”_ roared Rossi in a voice that Garcia had never heard before, and she was suddenly very, very glad she wasn’t the man who’d brought them here. His voice was the voice of a man looking to murder. _“Garcia, is that Jack?”_

“And Henry,” Garcia said with numb lips, desperately fighting the desire to follow Henry’s lead and dissolve into tears. _Big girl pants on,_ _Penelope,_ she scolded herself. _You need to keep these kids calm now, calm and safe and get them home._ “Oh god, Rossi please help, we don’t know where we are and they’re so scared and I can’t go out there with them, I can’t.”

Cursing filtered hollowly through the speaker, as though Rossi had put his hand over his mouth to muffle the language. _“What number are you?”_ he finally asked.

Garcia looked down and Jack obediently shuffled back a few steps off the number, pulling Henry close to his spaceship-decorated chest. “Three.”

_“Right, okay, listen carefully. I’m one, and I’m coming to you. Do not move out of that room. You do not move, not one step. Push that door closed if you can, and I’m coming to you. Do you understand?”_

“Yes,” Garcia replied, straightening. A game plan. Stay put and stay safe; this she could do. Nothing was getting to these kids, not while Penelope Garcia was alive!

“It’s alright, Uncle Dave,” Jack interrupted, eyes determined. “I’ll keep them safe.”

There was a low chuckle in reply. _“Good man, Jack. I’m on my way.”_


	3. Don't Think of Dying

Stepping into the maze was like stepping into another world.

Hotch took a deep breath and the still air filled his lungs, keeping focused. _Take the first left fork, straight onto the five-way intersection and then the third exit,_ he chanted in his head as he started a steady jog up the hall. _Don’t think about the others, don’t think about Jack, just focus on getting out of here and bringing everyone home._

_Jack._ Hotch shuddered as a lump in his chest threatened to overwhelm him, doing its best to break through his carefully constructed calm. Somehow the unsub had gotten into their homes without being seen, overcome five trained field agents and one ex-field agent, and gotten them all here. _How?_ Had he also left Jack sleeping alone in his room, to wake up in the morning and find that his dad had disappeared during the night? The thought was gut-wrenching.

Hotch pushed his son’s potential panic to the back of his mind, unable to dwell on it without it becoming all he could think about.  If he died here, if they all died here, his son would be alone. Just him and Jessica. But at least Jessica would keep Haley’s memory alive…

Everyone who could keep Hotch’s memory alive was here with him.

_JJ,_ he thought with another sick jolt in his gut. JJ was here, which meant Henry could lose his mom. His mom, his godfather, Garcia… he couldn’t imagine how Garcia was handling this, if she had been captured too. She had to have been if she was one of the eight, and she wasn’t trained to deal with this. She wasn’t trained on how to keep herself safe.

Hotch realized that his mind was wandering dangerously off track and he slowed to a walk, looking around at his surroundings. He was still on the path he had chosen and everything looked exactly the same. Miles of wall painted flat grey, the occasional piping and dull fluorescent lighting breaking the monotony. Nothing to give him a clue as to where he was, what kind of place they’d been trapped in, or who had trapped them here. He paced down the hall, eyes scanning the ground and walls for anything out of place, mind whirring. He was a profiler, they all were, so they should do what they did best.

Profile.

Kidnapping seven federal employees? The unsub would have to be highly intelligent and have some sort of skill with his hands to have constructed even part of this labyrinth. If the rooms were booby-trapped, that added sadism to the mix. A sadist would want to watch. He’d want to see them get hurt. He’d want to see them killed, if it came to that. He’d want to be able to relive it, over and over. And he’d do anything to get that fix. Even rig the game.

And it was a game, this maze of his. The maze, the markers… everything setup to control their reactions for his own amusement. He’d specifically targeted the BAU team, so it was someone from their past or someone who knew them, someone who wanted revenge. Someone who wanted them to suffer. There were too many possibilities, too many people whose lives had taken a downward spiral the same time the BAU were involved with them. That was the nature of their job. They worked with people during the darkest moments of their lives.

That didn’t leave a small list of suspects.

The corridor widened abruptly, leaving him in an open space with multiple exits. _Third exit,_ he repeated. If the man was going to set a trap anywhere, here would be a good place. Examining the other doorways, he spotted the uneven glint of light off a wire stretched across the third exit.

Sloppy, but effective… if Hotch had been as distracted as he had been before.

He backed up so he was as far from the wire as possible, looking about for something to use to trigger it. In loose shorts and the baggy shirt that he slept in, he hardly had clothes to spare. But glancing up gave him an idea. He reached up, smacking the plastic covering over the fluorescent light overhead with his palm and bringing it down into his hand, weighing the thick plastic carefully. Edging away so there would be a corner between him and whatever was triggered, he lobbed it with deadly accuracy at the wire, hoping it was heavy enough.

The wire released with a _twang_ and a heavy fog gushed out of the walls around where it had been situated. Hotch shot backwards, pulling his shirt over his mouth and cursing the thin cotton it was made of. If that gas was lethal, he’d just blocked himself off from the only path he knew out through this mess. As he backed away, an odd sour smell pervaded the air. It was slight, barely noticeable, but it was also memorable.

What was it that Reid had told them one day when Prentiss had been complaining that he’d ruined the smell of coffee for her? The reason she now thought of Reid every time she smelled coffee was because of how closely memory was linked to scent… lifelong associations could be made just by smelling something. He could almost hear Reid’s cheerful recitation of the properties of the human olfactory sense. 

Hotch hesitated, before uncovering his mouth and sniffing carefully.

Jack’s fourth birthday. Haley had thrown him a massive party and then taken him to a play, inviting Hotch along. Hotch had been walking down the aisle with Jack’s snacks right as the play had begun, the fog from the smoke machines swirling around his ankles… he remembered how excited Jack had been. He’d almost made himself sick.

That had been Jack’s last birthday before his mother had died, and Hotch _remembered_.

Dry ice. It was _dry ice_.

Hissing in frustration at having wasted time, he moved quickly through the eddying mist and down the hallway he’d chosen, narrowing his eyes to try and see through the smoke for any more wires. Suddenly, a scream reverberated down the hall, his heart gallop in his chest at the sound. It came again, female and terrified. Hotch broke into a run, trying desperately to work out which of the corridors it had resonated from, an impossible task; the place was designed to bounce sound around and turn it into a series of useless echoes.

_Wait…_ he stopped, tilting his head carefully to the right. Was that a sob?

“Greenaway?” he called into the opening, the lights too dismal to make anything out. It couldn’t be Elle—she shouldn’t be down this way if she was following his instructions.  Of course, he knew how well Elle followed instructions. “Prentiss? Sound off! JJ?”

Silence.

Another scream, this time agonised, and Hotch ran down a dizzying array of corners, hand skimming over his hip for a gun he wasn’t wearing. Turning around one last bend, he braced himself for whatever he was about to face and was sent sprawling as his foot caught on another wire. He slammed to the ground with the _uh_ of his air being knocked from his chest.

“Fuck!” he snarled as familiar smoke began rushing into the room, whirling around the recorder perched cheekily right in the centre. It had been a recording. It was _just_ a recording. The question of why he’d been lured into this particular room occurred to him right about the point he realized it might just be a recorded scream, but the fog definitely _wasn’t_ dry ice. The thick, acrid smell filled his mouth as his eyes began to burn.

He screamed.

 

* * *

 

Reid moved quickly along the passages. He was vividly aware that he was moving far quicker than any of his friends would be, chanting a mantra to himself to stop from obsessing over the thought of leaving any of them behind in these dark corridors. _Get to the green dot. Get to Emily. Go from there. Don’t dwell on what could happen, or what could be happening, just keep moving._ When he stopped chanting, the door that he intended upon taking to get him to the marker stood in front of him. He slid it open cautiously. It yawned open into pitch blackness, his heart skipping strangely as he comprehended the endless obscurity it stretched out into. The absolute absence of anything approaching light.

The door strained against his hand, set on a spring that would send it slamming shut as soon as he let go. If he went in there, it would be into utter darkness. And he’d have to repeat the trip once he’d found the marker and headed back to reach Emily. Two forays into his second-greatest fear.

He didn’t think he could manage even one.

He stepped back and let the door close between him and the darkened room. Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes until the helpless trembling in his limbs died down and wiped suddenly damp palms on his trousers, considering his opinions logically. _Nyctophobia._ His brain’s disfigured perception of darkness. Reid could rattle off alternate names for the condition, treatments, statistics, the entomology of the word… but he couldn’t go in that room. Not when there was another option.

The sweat cooling on his body was causing him to shiver. He needed to be careful, to avoid symptoms of shock or exposure. Now was not the time to be facing long-held fears.

Reid avoided looking at the door as he jogged away, instead visualizing the map precisely in his mind. There was another way, another doorway. It wasn’t as quick and it would lead him through a series of the smaller rooms he’d intended upon evading, but if they were safe he wouldn’t have to face that room. He found the alternate path easily enough, flinching every time he released a door and heard it clang shut behind him with sobering finality. He was doing exactly what he’d told Emily to avoid, risking getting cornered, all because he was too weak of mind to face his fear.

The rational part of his brain pointed out that there was always the possibility he would have gotten locked in the room once he was in, but he doubted it. The design of it, the best path taking him through something he was bitterly afraid of was almost like it was rewarding him for taking the hardest route. Which, in reverse, meant that he would be punished for taking the easy way out. He decided quickly not to dwell on that.

Another doorway, and he was in yet one more empty room, seemingly safe by the quick scan he gave it. His heart rate subsided, and he began his careful way across the room to the next door.  The slower, shuffling pace he’d adopted in case of tripwires or uneven flooring probably saved his life. The corner of his shoe scuffed very slightly against a narrow ridge on the ground. It was almost impossible to see in the dull lighting. Reid froze in place, carefully easing back and crouching on his heel to examine it. The pressure plate sat oddly, listing slightly to one side as though it was barely held in place. It wouldn’t have taken much to set it off.

Reid had no idea what would have happened if he’d triggered it, and he had no intention of finding out. He carefully skirted it and stepped across to the doorway, mouth dry and hands trembling. _The others, oh god how do I know they’re okay, what if they’re not,_ he obsessively circled over in his mind, feeling that pressure plate looming behind him as a reminder of what _could_ go wrong. The isolation of the maze was beginning to grate on him, leaving him paranoid and tense. His mind chased itself into frantic circles.

One more clear room and he was in the open corridor again, and up the hallway was an intercom with a steadily blinking light. He stumbled over to it and leaned against the wall for a moment, calming himself once more. It wouldn’t do any good to speak to whomever was on the other side and have them hear how close he was to losing control… if there was someone there to listen, anyway.

The button felt like hope under his finger. “Please, let there be someone listening,” he breathed into it, leaning his head against the cold wall and closing his eyes. “Please.” Begging. He was begging. _Weak_.

_“Spence, oh my god, Spence. You have no idea how good your voice sounds.”_

When he saw JJ next, he was going to hug her and possibly never let go. “JJ! Where are you? Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He pushed closer to the wall, hands splayed against it and heart hammering as though he could reach her if he just _tried_ hard enough.

Her voice was steady, and for the first time since he’d entered the maze, Reid could manage his fear adequately. _“I’m okay. I’m not hurt at all. I’m at the first marker closest to my cell.”_

“What number?”

_“Six.”_

Reid hissed in part relief, part surprise, as he walked back through the maze in his mind from her cell and calculated where she was now. “You’re next to me. I was seven. I can come get you if you can reach the next intercom.”

She sounded uneasy. _“Maybe. I might remember the way. Who else have you spoken to?”_

“I can lead you. Emily—I know where she is, she’s waiting for me by an intercom near her cell. I’ll get you and we’ll double back and meet her where she’s waiting.”

She laughed. There was something in her laugh that hurt to listen to, as though he’d extended a hand to her when she was drowning and she was shattering with the respite of her rescue. _“Christ, you have no idea how good it is to hear you say that. I don’t know what it is about this place, but being alone is…”_

“Petrifying,” he finished for her. “Listen carefully, and tell me if you need me to repeat anything.” He gave her the instructions to the next meeting point, reciting them four more times until he was pretty sure she was asking just to avoid being alone again. Which was good, because he was doing the exact same thing.

_“Is there any other way to get to the second fork? A way other than the door you want me to take?”_ she asked suddenly, voice cracking slightly.

“Well… yes. But that’s the safest.”

_“There are… dogs. In that room. I barely got the door closed in time...”_ Her voice caught and broke and, for a moment, he vividly imagined her being pulled down by a beast twice her size and his stomach lurched. Unarmed, probably in her nightwear…

“There’s another way. Travel up to the door with the dogs and no further. I can get to you there.” He’d have to go through another bunch of smaller rooms and it would take longer, but he was pretty sure Emily wouldn’t move without being sure he wasn’t coming. She was made of tougher stuff than he was.

_“That means you’re moving further.”_

“Yeah, it also means we don’t accidentally let a bunch of furious dogs out into the maze,” he answered, trying for a teasing tone but twitching at the mental image. “But we have to move now.”

A deep breath on the other end, and it was time to go. _“Stay safe,”_ she said quietly. There was nothing else they _could_ say.

“We’re getting out of this, JJ. Together.” It was the least he could promise her.

Then she was gone and he was alone again.

He ran now, thoughts of slow and steady being pushed away by the consuming desire to be with another human. Not to mention, there was the pervading sense that he was being watched… “Paranoia, it’s just paranoia,” he murmured under his breath as he paused to regain his wind. There were two options from here: the smaller rooms clustered together in a claustrophobic bunch like he’d faced before, or a longer connecting one that he hadn’t seen the likes of yet. The thought of that pressure plate and the careful way he’d had to travel through those rooms sealed it. He went for the longer one.

The snick of the lock engaging when the next door closed behind him was almost a threat. The room had a blind corner down the middle and he approached it cautiously, peering around and feeling a numb sort of resignation when he saw what awaited him.

“You know, if you’re taking your trick ideas from popular youth fiction, then you’re probably in the wrong kind of business,” he said irritably, walking up and narrowing his gaze at the table between him and the doorway. Skirting it, he wasn’t surprised to find the opposing door solidly locked. He turned back with a dull sense of trepidation.

Eight cups of varying sizes and a slip of paper. A children’s riddle. It was almost ridiculously simple. “You are watching us,” Reid said softly, eyeing the cups. They weren’t connected to the table, or on pressure pads, or any sort of electrical device. The door would be triggered by someone watching to see if he met the conditions. If he drank the right one. Well, there was no if. This puzzle wasn’t exactly designed for _him_.

It was meant for JJ, the mother who would read novels to her child and recognise it instantly. She would take a little longer than him to figure it out, but she _would_ figure it out eventually. It would have only delayed her.

_Three deadly, two harmless, two paralysing, two incapacitating, one that will provide release._ His eyes skimmed over the instructions, reading the riddle that pointed to the safe one and figuring it out in seconds. “It’s the centre cup,” he said out loud for the benefit of the unsub, picking up the cup and sniffing it suspiciously. He paused momentarily, wondering if he could mouth it and spit it out once he was out of the room, but he figured the unsub would be ready for that. If he did that and ended up locked in, JJ and Emily would be waiting in vain.

He could taste it, wait to see if anything unpleasant happened, then finish it… that would take time, but would be safest, but did he trust this guy to play by his own rules?

Did he have a choice?

_“Trust is earned, Doctor Reid,”_ issued a voice hollowly from a concealed speaker. _“Finish the drink in one mouthful, or I will seal the door and let you rot. Your brain can’t break down walls. Thirty seconds before I seal it.”_

Reid swallowed it in an easy mouthful, gagging at the bitter taste of the liquid. Gasping for air through watering eyes, the click of the lock opening was the most welcome sound he could have imagined. Kicking the table moodily to knock the other glasses over might have been childish, but as the table began to hiss and bubble under one of the liquids, he was sorely glad he’d only ended up having an unpleasant drink. He still slammed the door shut violently behind him.

And when the numbness began to spread steadily up his arms, Reid was more disappointed than surprised. “You fucking bastard,” he said, sick realization making his heart twist as he stopped mid-step. “You cheated. There was no right answer.”

His next step somehow missed the ground and he hit the floor clumsily, his arms too sluggish to catch himself. “You _bastard_ ,” he slurred again, tightening one palm against the cool cement as though to hold himself to it. It lurched crazily underneath him.

_Don’t leave JJ alone,_ his mind screamed. _Get up._

He closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Elle shuddered as adrenaline crashed through her, glancing back at the room she’d just sprinted through. Acrid smoke from the charred floor burned the back of her throat and she coughed and backed up, waving her hand to clear the air. Whoever had clumsily designed these traps hadn’t reckoned on the team just well… outrunning them. Hell, Elle hadn’t counting on the team outrunning them. She couldn’t see Hotch, or someone as meticulous as JJ, just taking the chance that they could and charging through.

Reid? Maybe, if he had reason to think it would work. She’d seen him be reckless. They all had.

Morgan?

If he got mad enough.

The green mark she wanted to get to was through another room. One more to go, and she’d be at her first goal. Steadying her breath, she took a moment to prepare before moving to the door and placing a sweaty hand against it, pushing it open. The room looked clear. There were no openings where something nasty could be leaked in, the floor was flat and obstruction free, and there were no tell-tale glints of light from a wire. _Here you go, Greenaway,_ she thought fiercely, before leaping through the doorway and bolting across the empty space.

Ah. The room had been clear. She laughed tightly, straightening and looking about the new corridor for whatever the marker could mean and spotting it quickly.

“ _Qué alivio_ ,” she muttered, walking up and slamming the heel of her palm against the button of the intercom. Maybe she’d be able to get hold of one of the team, make some sort of plan for once she’d met up with Hotch.

Nothing happened.

Her throat tightened as she tapped the button frantically. Why would he install a broken intercom? To inspire hope and take it away? Why bother with that, he already had them running around like rats after their dinner…

As a punishment. Damn.

“The intercoms shut down if we trigger traps, don’t they?” she shouted, voice echoing down the corridor. “You fuck, you’re rigging this against us, aren’t you? You’ve got no intention of letting us out of here!” Well, he’d see about that. She was going to find him, and put her size seven shoe up his size obnoxious ass.

And then she was gonna shoot him.

How many traps had she triggered? How many intercoms had she unintentionally shut off, possibly dooming one of the field agents to death?

But she couldn’t focus on that, or she’d paralyse herself with the possibilities. Reorienting herself, she set off again in the direction that, so long as she didn’t get hopelessly lost, should lead her to Hotch. Eyeing the direction she had planned on taking, the first inkling of apprehension trickled in. If this room was rigged, she’d be responsible for yet another lost avenue of communication. But it was the only way she remembered clearly…

Apologising silently to her fellow prisoners, she braced herself to run. It was the last one. No more after this. Once she’d met up with Hotch, she’d take the slow and careful way. They could work something out.

And she was almost across when something clicked and the floor beneath her exploded into burning heat, ripping her feet out from under her as she desperately scrabbled for the door. By the time she hit the ground, she wasn’t sure if she was unconscious or if the world had imploded around her.

All she knew was the pain of it.


	4. Darkness is Always Waiting

Time was fluid down in these narrow corridors. JJ wasn’t sure anymore how long they’d been down here, how long since she’d run her hand over her son’s soft hair and whispered _goodnight_ to him. It could have been hours; there was no way to tell. It didn’t help that time had begun to slow and grind past as she curled her knees up and shivered against the door Spence had told her to wait at. _One elephant, two elephants,_ she counted slowly in her head, beginning again for what felt like the hundredth time. _Reid, where are you?_ He was taking too long. She closed her eyes again and leaned back, his words echoing: _“We’re getting out of this, JJ. Together.”_

She trusted him. He wouldn’t leave her.

 

* * *

 

Morgan trudged along the corridors, carefully scanning each section of floor. He’d learned his lesson when he’d nearly put a foot straight through a false floor panel, a move that would have guaranteed him a nasty broken ankle and would have been the icing on the shit cake of right now. Trying not to dwell on how his friends were faring, he kept his focus on the path. Every step was taking him one moment closer to the bastard that had thrown him down here. Morgan hadn’t wanted to get his hands on an unsub so badly since Hankel back in Georgia.

Or maybe Doyle. Yeah, probably Doyle.

The corridor widened suddenly, leaving him with five doors facing him and way too many options. Morgan paused, eyes raking across each door as though some clue would tell him which way to go. _Come on, you fucker, you gotta give us some sort of clue,_ he thought. Taking a deep breath, he decided to stick with what he’d been using. Far right, then he could backtrack if it was a dead end and double back. He was using logic, using his head. Reid would be proud.

That was his plan anyway, right up until he stepped through the doorway and the sound of a lock engaging rang out. It left him sealed in a room barely big enough to swing a cat in with nothing but his thoughts, a sporadically flickering light and… a gun.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said disbelievingly, stepping forward and picking up the gun. He checked to see if it was loaded.

It was.

What the _hell_ kind of game was this?

He turned on his heel, looking about the tiny space at both doors shut tight. “What am I supposed to do?” he shouted, feeling the narrow thread of calm he’d managed to maintain snap. “I’m not going to be able to shoot my way out with a Glock!” The shrill shriek of the intercom buzzing sent spikes of pain into his head as it resonated around the confined space. Morgan yelped and brought the hand not holding the gun to his head, pressing a palm flat against his ear.

_“You show no hesitation in taking a bullet for your friends, so let’s see you take one for **you**. The door won’t open until you do. Hand, foot, head: I don’t care where.”_

There was no fucking way he was playing by this sadist’s game anymore. Morgan shook his head furiously and sat against the wall, the gun held loosely at his side. “Nope. What’s the worst you’ll do? Keep me locked in here? _Someone_ will find me.” A hollow laugh sounded out from the wall in reply before falling silent. _Ass_. Morgan leaned thumped his head back twice, hearing the dull _thud_ of the impact reverberate through the surface. He was just going to have to be patient.

Time passed slowly as he strained every sense listening for noise that could indicate one of his team was passing nearby. Eventually this grew tiring as he began reacting to the smallest sounds, including those his own body made. After the fourth time he’d jolted upright, having mistaken the rush of blood in his own ears as footsteps, he took to tapping out varying complexities of patterns on the walls. The shrill hiss of the hidden speakers broke his concentration during the second go of _Don’t Stop Me Now_ and his hand twitched around the gun. He sure as hell wasn’t giving that up, not if the unsub had been stupid enough to give him the advantage of a fully loaded weapon.

_“Eight little mice started in my maze; now one’s fallen and won’t get up again,”_ jeered the cold voice. _“Poor seven. Scurry faster, little mice, or you’ll be next.”_

It was like taking a familiar flight of stairs in the dark and missing one; the horrifying plunging moment when the ground suddenly became deceptive. Morgan was frozen with the terror of that icy announcement and the plunge that followed it. Someone was dead. Someone had entered this hellhole who wouldn’t be leaving it.

Reid, JJ, Emily, Hotch… Garcia.

No.

He couldn’t think of the possibilities without his heart feeling like it was going to tear out of his chest. Instead, he replaced the pain with rage and slammed his foot into the wall with all the force he could muster. “You… fucking… sonofa... _bitch_!” he snarled, punctuating every blow. The wall shuddered at the assault. Morgan paused, and then kicked again. The wall… shuddered? And then he was laughing, a hysterical, broken kind of laugh. “You stupid, stupid sicko! You might have a twisted mind, but you’re some _shit_ kind of handyman.” He was _done_ playing games. He was getting out of this room and he was tracking down this lunatic and he was stopping this. Stopping _him_.

Bracing his shoulder, it only took two goes for the wall to crack under his weight. It was just cheap drywall with paint to make it appear like concrete and it crumbled away easily once he’d broken through. Booting in the remains of the wall to make a hole to crawl through, he found himself in a narrow passage clearly designed to allow the unsub free access to the maze without entering the dangerous corridors.

“Yeah, betcha hadn’t planned for that!” he yelled to no one, ducking to avoid bumping his head against the low roof.

_“On the contrary,”_ replied the voice. _“I was relying on it.”_ A dull hissing was all the warning given before the air turned foul.

_Fuck,_ thought Morgan, and began to run.

 

* * *

 

Hotch was blind.

He’d managed to stagger up and out of the deadly smoke, somehow making it down the corridor before collapsing, still screaming with the pain of his burning face. The smoke was in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and everywhere it touched, it burned. When the burning finally began to fade, just enough that he could calm his racing heart and try to take stock of his injuries, he found that the world had turned dark and empty.

He was _blind_.

He took a deep rattling breath that seared his lungs. It barely helped hold back the terror of the loss of his most valuable sense, facing being alone in this deadly labyrinth with no way to navigate the countless twists and turns. His world was nothing but white, and he was as good as dead.

This would kill him.

A crackling hiss reverberated around him. He turned to try and face it, realizing too late that this would leave him hopelessly disorientated. There was no way of telling if he was heading back in the direction of the tear gas flooded room or towards another equally dangerous path.

_“Eight little mice started in my maze; now one’s fallen and won’t get up again,”_ the speaker announced in a blank, cruel voice. _“Poor seven. Scurry faster, little mice, or you’ll be next.”_

Hotch’s gut lurched with the knowledge that one of his team lay dead in this maze, all because he hadn’t been able to get to them in time. Not JJ… Emily. Dave. Any of them. “Why are you doing this?” he screamed, wondering if the man could even hear him. “Who are you? Who fell? Who was it? Stop this, _please_!”

No reply, not that Hotch had really expected one.

Still wheezing with the pain of his burnt throat and mouth, Hotch staggered upright and held his arms out, seeking the wall to guide him. He couldn’t just sit here and wait for someone to find him… he needed to get to his team. He needed to keep them safe. He needed to know who had died, if they had died, if they were just hurt…

That thought was still in his mind when the floor dropped out from under him, plunging him into empty space with his shoulder impacting painfully on the ledge on the way down. A harsh cry of shock and dismay tore from him, made ragged by the injury to his throat, and he hit the ground, hard. It was too much. It was all too much. Hotch let himself lay on the floor, his shoulder numb and unresponsive, his eyes useless, and tried to regain his breath and his hope.

He failed.

He was going to die here.

 

* * *

 

“—and then your dad comes walking in and straight into Reid who spills his coffee _all_ over him and, oh, you should have seen poor Reid’s face when he saw his coffee all over Hotch’s—your dad’s—brand new shirt and tie. I thought he was going to _cry_.” Garcia was keeping up a constant stream of dialogue with the two boys as she dug at the plastic casing around the intercom with her chipped and broken nails, anything to keep them calm. And her calm. Just, calmness in general, for everyone, really.

“Did Uncle Spence get in trouble?” Henry whispered hoarsely, and Garcia almost lost her grip on the plastic with relief. Henry’s eerie, stunned silence—broken only by his rough coughing—had been terrifying her.

“Of course not,” Jack replied, his voice carefully bright. “Dad wouldn’t tell him off because he walked into him. That wouldn’t be fair.”

The casing cracked finally as the boys talked, and Garcia levered it off the wall with a delighted cry, narrowing her eyes at the muddle of wires underneath. Hopefully, fingers crossed, she might be able to get through to other intercoms, the rest of her team. They were getting out of here!  But then a voice echoed into the room from a speaker somewhere behind one of the thick grates on the wall, a voice that Garcia knew would haunt her nightmares from now on.

_“Eight little mice started in my maze; now one’s fallen and won’t get up again,”_ it said, the hint of a laugh in the robotic voice, as though he was sharing a wonderful joke. _“Poor seven. Scurry faster, little mice, or you’ll be next.”_ It went silent. Garcia held one hand against the wall and focused on not throwing up and certainly not thinking too hard about what she’d just heard.

“What does that mean?” Henry said with a voice that hitched. “What mice?”

“Did someone die?” Jack said, the forced brightness gone and replaced with panic. “Someone’s dead, Penelope. Someone’s dead! Is it Dad?”

“No, no, no, sweeties, it’s okay, it’s just a silly rhyme,” Garcia managed. One look at Jack’s face told her that he wasn’t falling for it. “It’s a _stupid_ rhyme by someone _stupid_ who thinks this is a joke and who I’m going to _destroy_ when I get hold of.” But despite her anger and their fear, she couldn’t take the time to comfort them. She needed to get hold of her team and find out what had happened, what that cryptic message had meant, and find out for sure that no one had died.

Of course no one was dead, the idea was stupid. She worked with the most observant people in the world. This maze would be a piece of cake for them.

But where was Rossi?

She tugged at the wires, carefully rearranging them and pressing the button, calling out twice into the speaker before moving on. Behind her she could hear Jack telling Henry stories about his dad. His voice was still tinged with that horrible, choking panic, but he was doing his best to hide it from his friend.

It broke her heart.

“Hello, hello?” she tried again, closing her eyes when the intercom remained silent. “Hello? Anyone?” She released the button, reaching for the wires again.

_“Penelope?”_ came a soft, startled voice. A familiar voice but changed by the thickness of tears.

“Emily!” Garcia cried, slamming her hand back onto the button with her own tears clouding her vision. “Oh Emily, it’s so good to hear you, you have no idea! Are you okay?”

A noise that sounded horrendously like a broken sob issued back, and Garcia suddenly noticed the boys had fallen quiet, listening intently. _“Pen, the announcement…”_

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Garcia said quietly. “Emily, I have the boys here with me.” She needed to say it, needed to tell Emily before she said something that would destroy either of the two children that Garcia had promised to look after. Before Emily could tell them that it was Hotch or JJ that had fallen in this nightmare.

“Holy shi— _what_? Jack and Henry? Garcia, you’re kidding, right?” The stunned grief was still there, but faint, sidelined with the shock of Garcia’s announcement. “Where are you? I’ll come get you. Are you all safe?”

“They’re fine, we’re all fine. We’re still in the cell. Rossi’s looking for us. Emily? _Emily_?” Her friend had fallen quiet, the only proof that she was still there the sound of her breathing.

“There’s someone coming,” Emily said softly.

 

* * *

 

_“Eight little mice started in my maze; now one’s fallen and won’t get up again. Poor seven. Scurry faster, little mice, or you’ll be next.”_

The words danced around JJ, teasing and taunting her maliciously. Two of them in particular stood out. _Poor seven. Poor seven. Poor seven._

Spence would never leave her alone. Spence, her brilliant, caring friend, would never break a promise to her. His words echoed hollowly in her brain. _“You’re next to me, I’m seven.”_ Dead now, because she couldn’t face her fears. Her fault again. Staggering to her feet, JJ walked stiffly in the direction she thought he might have been coming from, all thoughts of getting to the centre gone. It was her turn to make a promise to him.

She wouldn’t leave him alone in the dark.


	5. Speaking of Destiny

Morgan knew he was in serious trouble as soon as the gas began to fill his mouth and lungs, his throat aflame. He had no idea what it would do to him. Would it would kill him outright or slowly and agonisingly? There was no sense in sticking around to find out. He ran, crouched awkwardly, desperately searching for a panel or wall he could break to get out of the increasingly uninhabitable wallspace. One hand slammed against the wall as he checked for weak points. He found an exit quickly, but not quickly enough, and ripped open the panelling to tumble through into the clear air of the corridor, pushing the panelling closed behind him to seal away the gas.

Panting, he lay on the ground and tried to focus on his breathing. Calm, deep breaths to clear away the heaviness in his lungs and replace it with oxygen before it did too much damage. _Maybe I’m going to be okay_ … he hoped as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, heart slowing to a respectable speed, hand still holding the gun. At least he’d gotten a weapon out of it. There was hope yet, for him anyway. Not for one of his teammates. His stomach lurched and he gagged. The rancid taste of the gas he’d inhaled filled his mouth again as he coughed, mixed with the acrid aftertaste of bile and making his eyes water. He had to find his team.

He stood on legs that shook and carefully made his way down the hallway in the first direction he saw, knowing that he was hopelessly lost at this point anyway with no chance of turning back to re-orientate. Squinting through the gloom, he tried to collect his splintered thoughts and come up with a plan, something to cling onto. Anything.

Someone moved behind him, heavy footsteps dogging his own carefully. Morgan skipped, the missing beat in his own gait filled by the sound of someone else’s. Tensing, he held the gun ready at his side and tried to ignore the tickling feeling of the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

Whirling around, he aimed the weapon. “FBI, stand down!” The empty corridor mocked him. Shadows wavered in his vision and created pockets of darkness that loomed. “Hello?” he called, cautiously. “It’s Morgan. Who’s there?”

He heard the sound of a shoe scuffing behind him and spun again, backing against the wall with his heart pattering frantically. Someone ducked behind a corner in front of him, the sound of feet running away echoing loudly down the corridor. He took off after the shadow with a snarl, angry at himself for his own fear and at the unsub for mocking him, determined to end this. “Stop!” he roared, rounding the corner and seeing the shape dash around another just an armspan ahead.

Sprinting after it without even slowing for the turn, he sprawled over a still form directly in the centre of the hallway. The gun skittered out of his hand as he slammed to the ground, coming to rest against the wall. Lunging forward, he grabbed it and rolled, aiming at whatever had tripped him. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, his arms trembling and his skin clammy with sweat.

Reid looked back at him with hollow eyes, lips shaped in his usual lopsided smile on his wax-like face. Blood matted chunks of brown hair to a forehead that still gleamed wetly from the perfectly round bullet hole in the centre of his skull.

Morgan screamed, almost dropping the gun in his haste to stumble forward and reach a trembling hand towards his friend’s corpse. He took Reid’s motionless wrist in his hand, fumbling for a pulse that he knew he wasn’t going to find. Reid was cold. His wrist was cold, the fingers stiff and immobile. He’d never move again and Morgan couldn’t think for the terror of it. Cold and motionless and gone.

A soft, wet cough sounded out nearby. He turned his head to find JJ curled up with her knees tucked protectively under her chin, watching him with dull blue eyes. Blood pooled around her feet. He dropped Reid’s hand with a shattered groan and shuffled over on numb legs, searching desperately for an injury. She was still alive. He could still save her.

“Who will look after Henry?” JJ asked quietly, her eyes never leaving his. “He’ll grow up alone. I’ll be just like your dad, killed in action. Why would you let that happen, Derek?”

“No, no, you’re fine. Hey, you’re fine. Where are you hurt?” he babbled, even as despair began to destroy him.

They were never getting out of here.

“He looks fine too, just a little hole,” she said, smiling horribly at him with her teeth stained red before gesturing with a limp hand towards Reid. “But I bet if you take a look at the back of his head, he won’t look so pretty any more, will he? Not so pretty, not so clever, not so _alive_ …”

Morgan stared at her stupidly for a second, shaken and unsure of how to answer. “JJ, what the hell?” he asked eventually, pulling away from her as she began to laugh brokenly. A cold hand dropped onto his shoulder and he jumping forward with a shout, almost putting another bullet into Reid when he spun around to face him. Reid, who was standing there with his head tilted casually to the side, as though he was about to tell him about the latest scientific errors in Doctor Who without even mentioning the bullet hole in his fucking head. His shirt clung wetly to his slender shoulder and he was grinning grotesquely, a nightmare. Not his friend at all.

A corpse.

“What the fuck,” Morgan stammered, because Reid was dead and it wasn’t just the fact that he had no pulse but he was very obviously dead and cold and Morgan could see splatters of visceral pink and chunky white on the ground where he’d been lying that was more than just blood. Reid _couldn’t_ be alive, he couldn’t, there was no way.

“Am I alive?” Reid asked cheerfully, his voice achingly familiar. “You’d better hope so, because if I’m dead it’s because you fucked up. Why do you always have to rely on me to think our way out of trouble? Don’t you have a brain of your own? Or are you just here to kick in doors and make the rest of us look smarter in comparison?”

There was a snorting chuckle behind him, and Hotch loomed out of the darkness. He smiled widely in a way that he’d never, ever smiled before, and blurred at the edges, becoming a part of the shadows that clung to him. “Diversity hire, god knows you never contribute anything intellectually,” he said, rolling his eyes and grinning at the corpse of Spencer Reid as though they were sharing an inside joke. Reid laughed in return.

Morgan was hallucinating. That was the only explanation. He was just hallucinating, it was whatever was in those drugs he’d inhaled, this _wasn’t real_. He dropped his gaze to his hands, suddenly aware of a buzzing numbness spreading up his extremities. The hands that were covered in blood, wet and slick. He rubbed his fingers against his palms and they came away tacky. Was that a hallucination as well, or had he really found a body here in this corridor?

When he looked up again, Hotch and JJ were gone but Reid was still there and his eyes were soulless. Shark eyes. Shark eyes in Reid’s face, and Morgan’s stomach rebelled and he tasted bile again.

“Sorry Morgan, that was a bit harsh,” the man apologised, ducking his head to let his hair curtain into his eyes shyly, a move that Morgan had seen him repeat daily. He’d forevermore associate it with this tunnel, and blood, and the taste of vomit. But Reid kept going, kept talking, and in all his life, Reid had never been this cruel. He was tearing Morgan apart with words and now Morgan knew what it was like to have that sharp intellect aimed at his heart. The world was beginning to fray apart around him, but Reid’s voice cut through it all like a siren he couldn’t block out. “It’s alright that you don’t have any brains, you can always use mine.” His smile was dark now, and Morgan knew what he was going to do before he did it, but he couldn’t move for the dread of it. “After all, I’m never going to use them again now that I’m **dead**.”

He turned his head around so Morgan could see and there was _nonononono no, he’s not dead, that’s not real, that’s not him so much blood and_ Morgan turned and ran and the walls shifted around him, the sound of Reid’s hysterical laughter echoing hollowly after him and the vivid, burning image of skull and brain matter and blood making his stomach twist and wrench and _whatisthat where am I, no no no no._

He hit the ground, leaving a smear of blood from his palm as he tripped, squeezing his eyes shut as hands ran over him, tugging at his shirt and sliding slick fingers along the skin of his arms. Vaguely aware of making some sort of horrified noise, but he couldn’t focus enough to stop.

_Stop. Stop, please, you’re not real, none of this is real, stop…. Reid’s not dead, Hotch isn’t dead, JJ isn’t dead and I’m never going to forget what Reid looks like with his brains blown open, too young, too smart, and now every time he goes near a gun that’s what I’ll see, and one of them is dead. One of them is dead and it could be any of them, and maybe not all of it was fake, I did this I didthis_

_Helpmehelpmehelpme._

“Help me!” someone screamed nearby and suddenly everything around him was calm and distant. Morgan opened his eyes, still shaking uncontrollably, and the corridor around him was clear. “Help!” He couldn’t take the risk of ignoring it if it was one of his team. He had to go.

He stood and took a single stumbling step and

It was dark and someone _whereami?_ was turning to look at him with wide eyes, hands raised

And Emily was on the ground, chest heaving as her shirt turned red _Iveseenthisbefore,_

eyes vacant and staring

He aimed the gun _wait_

“Too late,” said the person standing over Emily _staywithme_ , smiling with blackened teeth and wheezing slightly.

Morgan shuddered, trying to cling to his skittering thoughts as the buzzing in the back of his mind grew and stop his hands twitching almost too much for his finger to find the trigger. “I should have known it was you,” he snarled to the unsub, rage slamming into him and turning his veins to ice.

“Five now,” Billy Flynn rasped, cold eyes alight with humour as Emily took one last rattling breath and joined Reid in being gone. _toolateagain_

He _don’t_ aimed the gun.

Someone was screaming and he didn’t know who it was anymore.

He fired.

 

* * *

 

Elle clung to consciousness with the tenacity that had originally landed her the job at the BAU. After a long, agonizing period where the only thing she knew was that everything fucking _hurt,_ she climbed to her feet. Her hands were twitching involuntarily, the soft crackle of the dying electricity from the powered floor that had almost killed her filling the air. She was vaguely aware of someone speaking while she was on the ground, but when she tried to reach for the memory, it filtered out of her grasp. Well, she could cross ‘getting locked in an insane maze’ and ‘getting electrocuted’ off of her bucket list anyway. Yay for her.

Limping upright on scorched feet, she hissed in pain and waited for the twitching to slow before making her tedious way along the hall. Like fuck she was going to lie down and die like a dog in this sicko’s little trap. She was going to go down fighting, right to the end. Elle Greenaway was no one’s victim.

But the next intercom she found after an impossibly long, agonising walk was dead, and she hit it as hard as she could with pent-up aggression. The next was dead as well, but she didn’t have the energy to strike out this time and just limped on. Had she been the reason both intercoms were dead, or had the rest of the BAU taken some hits as well?

She hoped not. There wasn’t one of them she could stand to see hurt.

A sharp cry rang through the air and she froze, listening intently. Where had that come from? She set off, frustratingly slow with her shuffling feet, ears perked and waiting for another shout to lead her in the right direction. “Hello?” she called down the empty halls, holding her breath so she could hear. There was no reply, but… maybe? Maybe that was a gasp? Staggering down the nearest corridor, she almost tumbled down a sheer drop, barely managing to rock back on her heels, flinching as she put weight on battered skin, and peered in.

“Hotch?” she asked, shock and relief thundering through her all at once and making her woozy.

He jerked up with a terrified expression that stopped any relief she was feeling dead in its tracks. “Prentiss?” he asked cautiously, tensing and standing, one arm hanging oddly. He was looking straight past her, eyes flicking blankly back and forth. She stared for a moment, numb realization settling in. He was blind.

That fucker had blinded him.

She was going to burn the man who’d put them in here.

“It’s Greenaway,” she said through cold lips, crouching and preparing to lower herself into the pit. It was low enough that she could drop in without harm and boost him out.

“Elle,” he breathed, and closed his eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Blind, and still asking after her welfare first. Typical Hotchner.

“I’m fine. I’m next to you,” she warned him, watching him glance around frantically, searching for her. “Stay still.”

He stood motionless as she held a cool hand to his face and examined his eyes. They were red and weeping, the skin around his nose and mouth horribly blistered. “What happened?” she hissed, desperately wishing for water to try and sooth the painful looking rash.

“Tear gas,” he replied, reaching up as though to rub his eyes, before dropping his hand. “I think. I hope. It should be temporary…”

“Can you see anything?” He shook his head in reply, flinching as the movement jarred his arm. “I’m going to touch your shoulder now.”

That proved easier said than done. He stayed resolutely silent, even though her pulling his sleeve up to gain access to the joint must have hurt like a bitch. It was dislocated and spectacularly bruised. “Want me to pop it back in?” she asked hesitantly, running back over the first responder courses they’d all taken. It had been a while. All she could remember was being very firmly told not to try to relocate a joint in case she damaged the nerves.

“Do we have a choice?” Hotch said, his voice dark. “I’m already blind, I can’t make it through this one armed as well.”

Oh boy. “Close your eyes and think of Strauss,” she warned him, putting her hands on his shoulder. He snorted. To his credit, he didn’t make a noise. She was pretty sure she would have. She was pretty sure she did, and it wasn’t even her arm.

Testing the arm after, he hissed in pain as he moved it. “Passable,” he told her. “Your bedside manner needs work.”

Was that a joke? Did Aaron Hotchner just make a joke? Wow. Today _was_ a day for new experiences. “Don’t get too cocky,” she said. “We still have to get you out of this pit.” But he was quiet as she cupped her hands, scrabbling slightly to lever himself up before putting his uninjured arm down to help her out. His hand lingered on her arm slightly longer than was necessary, and she was glad he couldn’t see the way she leaned into the touch. It was eerily isolating in this maze. Touching him made her feel real again.

They trudged down the hall together, both moving slowly and painfully. Their shoulders brushed with their close proximity, and the silence between them was overwhelming. “You’re limping,” Hotch said suddenly, turning his head and looking at a point somewhere just beyond her ear. “Why are you limping? You said you weren’t hurt.”

“I said I was fine. I’m better than you, at least.”

“Elle.”

She took a deep breath, letting it out between clenched teeth. “I got electrocuted. A little. My soles are burnt up a bit, it’s nothing.”

He fell silent again, his head lowered and expression inscrutable. “I’d offer to have a look, but…”

She wasn’t sure she liked this new, joking Hotch.She examined him carefully, noting the new lines on his face and the prematurely greying hair around his temples. He’d aged ten years in the four since she’d last seen him. “It’s nothing, Hotch.” Something caught her eye and she reached out, touching his elbow gently to stop him. “Intercom. Maybe it’s working.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Her heartbeat quickened slightly with anticipation as she walked up to the com. Having Hotch with her, even blinded, made the whole nightmare somewhat more bearable… if they could find another teammate, maybe things would start looking up.

“The intercoms shut off if you set off too many traps. I’ve found three dead ones already.” He went quiet again and she knew he was thinking about the traps he’d stumbled into, wondering if he’d doomed a teammate. Blaming himself for failing to realize, just like he’d blamed himself for her breakdown. She cut him off before he could sink too far into those dark thoughts. Down that road lay madness. “Hello? Hello?” she called, pressing the button down and smiling stupidly when the light came on. She’d take any boon she could get at this point. “Is someone there? It’s Elle Greenaway, Elle and Hotch.”

Silence. Her eyes burned, stupidly. She wasn’t going to fucking cry. She could push through this. It was funny the things that broke a person. Not being kidnapped, not Hotch being blind, or the weeping masses of burned flesh that were her feet.

It was silence on the end of an intercom.

“We should wait a bit, see if someone replies,” Hotch said, his expression tortured. She wasn’t sure she would ever get used to the odd empty look of his sightless eyes. She hoped she never had to.

Opening her mouth to answer, she was cut off by the intercom clicking to life. _“Elle?”_ said a low female voice. _“Elle, what on earth?”_

JJ! “JJ!” Elle almost laughed with relief. “God, JJ. Don’t even ask why I’m here, I have no idea. Are you injured?”

JJ’s voice, when it replied, was monotonous, shattered. No trace of the happiness Elle felt at this moment of reunion. “No. Hotch, is that you?”

“Yeah.” Hotch stepped up beside her, his trembling hand held out to navigate. “Are you okay? Where are you? We’ll come find you.”

There was silence again except for the soft puff of JJ’s breath. Elle leaned forward to speak, frowning at JJ’s uncharacteristic reticence before the other woman spoke again and destroyed every iota of hope Elle had managed to claw back from despair.

_“Spencer’s dead.”_

* * *

 

“Don’t,” Emily said, dazed, holding one hand up in a pleading stance. “Derek. It’s me, it’s Emily. Please, don’t.” But Morgan looked at her with cold eyes, and pulled the trigger.

She fell with the ringing of her ears broken only by the sound of Garcia screaming.


	6. Everyone Leaves

_“Derek, it’s me. It’s Emily. Please don’t.”_

Garcia was frozen, helpless and drowning in the sick horror of this moment. What was going on? Why was Emily begging for her life from Morgan? From Derek? _Their_ Derek? It had to be some kind of sick trick, some…

_“Don’t!”_ Emily screamed, and there was real gut-wrenching fear in her voice. The sound of the gun that followed was an explosion that made the intercom hiss angrily, and Garcia didn’t realize she was screaming as well until small hands grabbed at her. Jack hung off of her torso with his mouth wide and eyes bulging in fear. She pulled him into a hug, dragging him in and pressing him close as though she could protect him from the hollow, panting sobs echoing through the speaker on the wall.

There was a groan of pain and it was masculine and relentlessly familiar. “Derek, Derek, baby please,” she sobbed, her voice piercing, and she could feel Jack shuddering against her with the effort of not voicing his fright. “Derek, honey, what’s happened? What’s going on?” She wasn’t sure she even believed that it was Morgan on the other end, and Emily had gone so goddamned quiet, _Emily, where are you?_ until there was a sudden shuddering exhale of breath and dragging, hesitant footsteps.

_“Penelope?”_ said the husky, loving voice that she usually cherished hearing, except this time it was shattered and broken in a way that she couldn’t even begin to imagine, as though he’d been lost and didn’t know how to find his way back. _“He killed Emily, I’m too late, he killed her, he killed her and I wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t smart enough and my hands…”_ He trailed off with a wrecked noise that sounded as though it hurt, and she was crying helplessly. He wasn’t right, this wasn’t him, and every moment he spent lost in whatever darkness he was in was another moment that Emily was possibly dying, bleeding out under him.

If she wasn’t already dead.

“Derek baby, you need to focus on my voice, okay?” she pleaded, hands gripping Jack so tightly she was almost worried she was hurting him. Behind her, Henry hovered with alarmed eyes, unsure of what was happening. “There’s no one there but you and Emily. You’re hallucinating. You need to snap out of it, Emily’s hurt and she _needs_ you.”

There was a wretched sound and for a second all she could hear was ragged breathing. _“Emily…”_ he whispered. _“Flynn…”_

“Isn’t there Morgan. Just put the gun down and help Emily, okay? Please?”

There was a sudden flurry of sound and Morgan groaned. _“Jesus Pen, she’s…”_

“Going to be fine. Just focus on her and only her, nothing else. I can get help. I can find help, but I need to go.”

She never wanted to hear him beg again. “Garcia, no, stay with me, you’re real, you make me real.” There was that babbling franticness to his tone again, and she wondered absently behind the horror just what he’d seen to scare him so bad.

“I’ll be back, I’m going to find someone to come and help you. Just… help Emily and don’t trust anything you see if it’s hinky, okay?”

He agreed softly and she pulled the wire, Jack still wrapped around her torso, and began shifting them and calling into the intercom. She had just left Emily alone with Morgan, who’d just shot her, and he wouldn’t have done that in his right mind, but he wasn’t exactly in his right mind, was he? What if he lost it again? Or worse, what if he found it and suddenly realized just who’d hurt Emily? Could he survive the knowledge that it was he who’d shot his friend?

_What if she’s already dead? No one is answering because she’s dead and they’re probably dead, and if the bad guy got Morgan who’s so strong and confident and precise, composed Emily, what chance does Reid have? Or JJ?_

_What chance do I have?_

Henry suddenly screamed, ear-piercingly loud, and Garcia felt Jack jolt and clench his hands in fear. “There’s someone at the door!” Henry shrieked, flinging himself behind her. She was swiftly overwhelmed by two frightened children trying to crawl up her with absolute terror. She turned with difficulty, moving and putting herself between the door and the boys as it opened.

 

* * *

 

Rossi slumped against the wall, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. His hand throbbed under the rough bandage he’d applied, blood still seeping through. Compliments of the bastard who’d put them here and a cunningly trapped door handle that had slammed a spike of wood straight through his palm when he’d gripped it.

Clever; Rossi had been taken completely by surprise.

Wiping his good hand across his forehead with a grunt, he began his steady jog again. He had to get to Garcia and the boys. Aaron’s son, Jack, trapped in this nightmare. And Henry, quiet, placid Henry: JJ’s blonde hair and huge blue eyes in miniature.

The thought of it made him want to get hold of the unsub and… well, probably get himself locked up instead. He owed it to Aaron, though, to keep his kid safe. If anything happened to Jack… he had no doubt that it would be the end of Aaron Hotchner. And Rossi wouldn’t have to worry about losing control with the unsub.

Aaron would do it for him.

He was pretty sure he’d managed to stay on track despite the sick, woozy sensation of blood loss pulling at his brain and slowing down his thoughts. As long as he hugged this path, kept to the side, he would reach them. And then they’d work something out. The IT woman was a tech genius. Surely, she could do some sort of electronic magic and get them out of there. Fashion some sort of radio out of the intercom, a lightbulb and their shoes maybe. He didn’t doubt she was capable.

It occurred to him that there was every possibility that he and Garcia were the last ones left in this maze. Reid would have gotten out within the first hour. Probably with his eyes shut just to show off. No doubt he’d gotten out, gotten himself a coffee, and come back with every law enforcement officer in the district to get the rest of them. It would be a nice change, being rescued by Spencer Reid for once.

Or maybe Prentiss. She was cool and cunning and so much more than she believed… if anyone was going to saunter casually out of here without a hair out of place, it would be Prentiss. He snorted to himself, imagining the shit she’d give Morgan if she got out of here and left him wandering around in circles.

Yeah, Prentiss would be good, if only to shake Morgan up a bit.

His musings were interrupted as he turned a corner and found himself at a dead end. At least, he thought it was a dead end until he dropped his gaze and saw the narrow crawlspace leading onwards.

“Oh, fuck you,” he muttered, running his uninjured hand through his hair and rolling his eyes. It wasn’t that he was scared of narrow spaces; he was just reluctant to put himself in a situation created by a _maniac_ where escape would be hindered.

But Jack was on the other side of that passage.

Rossi swore loudly and inventively. He intended to make sure that if that _wanker_ was listening, he got a nice earful of exactly what David Rossi thought of him. Dropping to his knees, he examined the width of the opening critically. It was going to be tight. And if it got any narrower before the end, he would literally be dragging himself through with the walls pressing in on him. Even without claustrophobia, the idea was unappealing.

Oh well. Let no one say that he was a quitter.

He carefully wedged himself in and flinched as he put his weight onto his right wrist instead of the pierced palm, leaving a spotty trail of blood behind despite his care. The going was slow, made even slower by the harrowing realization that the tunnel was in fact getting narrower, and no, it wasn’t his imagination. He set his gaze firmly on the glitter of light at the end even as he was forced to lay flat to pull himself along.

_Alright Dave, just a little more,_ he chanted over and over to himself. _A little more, a little more…_

His arms semi-blocked his view as he was forced to drop his head down to relieve a neck cramp with the awkward angle he’d been holding it at. His arms shuddered with the effort of heaving his weight forward without being able to rest, and every muscle in his body felt like it was being crushed with weight bearing down on him from every direction. He hadn’t been claustrophobic before, but he probably was going to be now. Next time one of them had to wriggle into some ridiculous spot, he was sending Reid in.

The end felt like it took him months to reach but eventually cool air brushed his face as he heaved himself out with a grunt, feeling the tight opening scrape painfully along his shoulders and back. It hadn’t been as bad as it could have been, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps the tunnel had been made for someone with more girth than him… someone even more reluctant to put themselves into a vulnerable position with no easy retreat.

He allowed himself a rest as he tightened the filthy strip of shirt he’d knotted around his hand. The long journey through the tunnel had hopelessly torn and crumpled it. The sound of a speaker crackling nearby sent a shudder down his spine as he waited for the harsh voice of their captor to echo hollowly out into the halls with some more cryptic bullshit.

_“Scare placid mice enough and eventually, they’ll turn on each other,”_ the voice mocked. _“Five mice left now that two and eight have ended each other’s misery. And time still ticks on.”_ Rossi shook himself, throwing off the oily sensation that the man’s voice left on him as though it was physically crawling on his skin and seeking an opening into his defences.

Five mice left. Did that mean five of them?

Which meant three of them were… injured. Or… no. Just injured. Until proven otherwise, he would assume that that meant three of them were injured enough that they couldn’t ‘play’ this guy’s sick game anymore. After all, he was obviously watching from cameras. How could he tell if they were dead or just incapacitated? All he knew was if they were still playing or not.

Staggering up, Rossi moved doggedly on. He should be getting close. One more bank of rooms and he would be in the same block as Garcia’s cell, and then they could make a plan together.  He’d never admit it to the feisty woman, but having company was going to be hugely comforting, even to him. The echoing loneliness of the maze was grating and had an unsettling effect on his sanity. He wondered how the more neurotic members of the team were handling the atmosphere. Reid and Morgan were great agents, especially in their elements. This was not their element, and Rossi imagined they both would suffer particularly hard with the isolation.

Carefully opening a door in case of a trap, Rossi took two steps in and froze, thoughts knocked off course. Taxidermied birds stared back at him, their beady eyes judging. It was intensely unsettling but overall… harmless. There was a thick layer of dust over the entirety, as though this had been the first room to be created and then left untouched for years. Across one wall was vivid lettering carefully stencilled exactly where a person’s gaze would fall upon entering.

**_What is your fascination with birds?_ **

Christ. This unsub was nuttier than a pecan pie. Rossi swallowed and moved quickly through the creepy room, overly relieved to shut the door firmly behind him. That was… probably not going in the next book. But his relief was shattered moments later by screams, horribly familiar screams, and he forgot his dizziness and aching muscles as he bolted towards the sound. Damnit, _no._ _Not getting this close to lose them now,_ he thought to himself, pushing himself to move faster.

Ahead was a door just like the one back in his cell, and he strained to push it open. Small voices cried out within as his hand slipped across the smooth metal, leaving blood glistening on it. The door gave in and he stepped into the entrance, letting out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding as Garcia straightened at the sight of him.

“Sir!” she cried, and suddenly he had an armful of Garcia in her frilliest nightie sobbing into his neck.

He didn’t actually mind that much.

“Hey, hey, shh,” he soothed, rubbing her back as she shook against him. Her words were indecipherable from between thick sobs. “It’s alright, I’m here, and we’re fine. You’re okay.”

“Uncle Dave!” screamed Jack in a voice that cut him right to his core; the voice that countless victims had used in the past and that he had never wanted to hear from _Jack_ ever again. He stepped into the room and dragged Garcia with him, wrapping his spare arm around the two boys as they huddled against him. He was wrong. He wasn’t going to go to jail for murdering this unsub. There was no jury on earth that would convict him for taking out the man who could do this to two innocent children and a woman who’d never hurt a soul in her life.

Opening his mouth, he tried to think of something to say to calm them down. Their anxiousness was starting to fray his nerves, threatening to send him off the knife’s edge of sanity he was dancing on.

The door grated against its runners and slammed shut, sealing them in.

“Oh my god,” Garcia gasped, turning white with fright. “Rossi…?” It was a question and a desperate, pleading supplication all at once.

Pushing the door with all his strength, he sensed rather than saw the two boys backing away and pressing themselves against the wall with wide, shock-dulled eyes. “It’s alright,” he called back over his shoulder. He hoped his voice was as calm and steady as he was trying to make it. “I’m going to get it open.”

_“He’s lying. That’s all grownups do, really. They lie,”_ crackled the speakers. Rossi wondered if the others in the maze could hear this or if they were the only ones lucky enough to be graced with it. _“They lie and say they’ll come back for you, and they lie and say they’ll always be there for you, and then they go away and they **die**. Just like your mom and dad, both dead in my maze.”_

Bastard. _Bastard._

Jack and Henry turned their heads in unison to stare at Rossi and the gaping horror on Jack’s face was only made less alarming by the disturbing blankness of Henry’s.

Rossi was frozen with the knowledge that he couldn’t do anything to help them.

“Don’t listen, it’s just a nasty trick,” Garcia said quietly, an expression on her face that Rossi imagined was the exact expression a bear wore before she killed some unlucky camper that had gone too close to her cubs.

_“It doesn’t matter if they listen to me or not, they’re not playing the game. I gave you all a chance, and you didn’t take it.”_

“What game?” Rossi called, keeping his tone steady. “We’ll play. Just tell us what to do.”

_“Well now that you’ve ruined it, you could do me the favour of dying. Ten minutes to panic and run about in your little cage, and then I flood it with gas and you all sleep forever. Game over. I hope the last three have more fight.”_

None of them said anything. The boys didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t whimper. They just looked at each other.

“What do we do?” Garcia asked Rossi, and they all turned to him for an answer.

And for once, David Rossi had nothing to say.

“I… I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

The floor under him was hard. He could feel himself melting, his bones turning liquid and pliable inside him. The bizarre feeling of weightlessness persisted even as he struggled against the sluggishness that engulfed him to try and open his eyes.

He was dead. This was dead. He’d felt this before, this odd lifting disconnect from his own body, on the floor of Hankel’s shack. If he breathed too hard, he might shake himself loose from his body and float away.

He cracked open his eyes and turned his head slightly to squint against the blinding light surrounding him, a momentous effort that left him feeling physically drained. He tried to move his arm to sit up, but it lay unresponsive next to him like a dead thing. It wasn’t his anymore; he was suddenly trapped in a body that didn’t belong to him.

He must have made some sort of noise as he struggled, because the light was replaced by a pair of cold eyes, corners tilted up in a soulless smile that dragged him in and tried to drown him.

“Do you like the circus, Dr. Reid?” the mouth below those eyes said, moving oddly to Reid’s skittering mind.

He didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. The man had taken his words and his body and his mind from him and left him on the cold floor as a shell. He blinked rapidly, feeling his heart doing strange beats in his chest as though it was unsure how to proceed. He tried to shrink away from those hungry eyes before they could devour him.

“I do,” hissed the mouth, leaning closer. “I particularly like the puppet shows. I like how… obedient they are.”

Reid opened his mouth and found the words that had been hiding, tasting the shape of them as he finally managed to speak. “Is anyone else dead?”

The eyes turned back to him and shifted again, becoming dark. “Yes.”

He stopped fighting and let himself sink back into the nothing, haunted by twitching hands and marionettes with grotesquely painted grins gaping widely.

_Yes._


	7. In Which There’s Dying

_“Spencer’s dead.”_

Those words slammed into Elle as a physical force. She should be staggering with the pain of it, thrown back into Hotch’s chest with the blow that JJ had just dealt them. Behind her, Hotch breathed with the sharp, rattling gasp of the truly shaken.

“How do you know?” he asked after a long, painful pause, his tone completely empty of anything approaching emotion.

_“He was seven,”_ JJ replied; her voice was concentrated torment. _“He was seven, and we were going to meet, but we didn’t. He promised, but he never showed. He wouldn’t have done that unless… unless he couldn’t be there.”_ Her breath started hitching, and Elle felt the exact moment when something in her own chest tore open. Spencer with his bright eyes and easy, charming smile. She hadn’t said goodbye to him when she’d left.

Now she never would.

“He could still be alive…” Hotch whispered, and there was something that was almost like begging in his tone.

_“He wouldn’t have left me, Aaron,”_ JJ said once more, and Elle felt, rather than saw, Hotch shatter slightly with the bitter acceptance of his youngest agent’s demise.

“Where are you?” Elle said finally. There was something horrible about standing here and watching Hotch sink into mourning. But worse was the idea that JJ was wandering around shell-shocked, grief stricken, and alone.  

_“Elle?”_ JJ asked with an odd calm. _“Elle Greenaway?”_

“Hey JJ,” Elle said, trying to smile and feeling it slip off her face like water. How could she smile when Reid’s body was lying somewhere in this maze? And how many others had fallen? Three overall, if that foul bastard was to be believed.

“Where are you?” Hotch asked again, his voice husky. Elle stiffened, refusing to turn around and confirm whether tears caused that huskiness. As long as she didn’t look, didn’t know, the knowledge that Aaron Hotchner had been driven to tears wouldn’t haunt her.

She couldn’t imagine anything making him cry. She didn’t want to.

A long, deep inhale floated through the intercom. _“Nowhere. Don’t come looking for me.”_

“JJ,” Hotch said, and suddenly the huskiness was gone and he was all leader again, putting his team before his own sorrow. “Tell me where you are.”

Terrible silence.

_“I’m going to find him, Aaron. I’m going to find where his body is, and I’m going to stay with him. He… you know how he is about the dark.”_

This time Elle did look at Hotch’s face, and the anguish written on every line of it floored her. JJ’s words were so broken, so real, that she couldn’t think for the relentless reality of it.

_“Good luck,”_ JJ murmured, and the com clicked off and left them standing there.

Gone.

Hotch made a soft noise like his heart was breaking.

“She’s not in her right mind, Hotch,” Elle comforted him, the floor under her feet suddenly unsteady. “She’s scared and you know how close she and Reid are. She’s just reacting. Besides, he might be alive. He _might._ He’s young and he’s strong; we don’t know what’s happened.”

“Just young enough to die,” Hotch said coldly, turning and walking away with surprising speed for someone blind.

She bolted after him, grabbing his arm tightly and refusing to let him shake her off. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to kill this sonofabitch,” Hotch snarled. He spun on her, his eyes maddened. Shuddering away from those eyes, she was left speechless; a rabbit suddenly faced with a hungry wolf. “He’s a fucking dead man.”

She tried to say something, anything, but he pulled his arm out of her grip and strode off. She examined him as he went. Something clicked, some observation she hadn’t been consciously aware of until now: _is he getting his vision back?_ She watched him carefully as he avoided a corner before hurrying after. _Either that, or he’s using echolocation…_

She wouldn’t have seen the wire strung carefully at ankle height if a trick of the light hadn’t made it glint suspiciously. To someone blinded, there was no hope of avoiding it.

“Hotch!” she screamed and hurled herself at his back as his foot caught it. They hit the ground agonisingly slowly as her arms wrapped around his torso and tried to pull him down to safety.

Then the world around them disintegrated, taking her with it.

 

* * *

 

Garcia was facing her death and that knowledge wasn’t anywhere near as frightening as the knowledge that Jack and Henry would be joining her. Her imagination kicked into overdrive, and she imagined JJ pulling open the door and finding them all dead. Henry looking like he was sleeping, Jack holding him close with cold hands.

Suddenly, she was moving. “Rossi!” she screamed, trying not to lose her head and failing, hands running across the door as her colleague kicked at the immovable walls.

Jack was hugging Henry and watching her with solemn eyes and she wondered wildly for a moment if he was thinking of his mom. “Want to hear a story, Henry?” he asked, and Rossi’s head whipped around with an oddly proud expression before turning back to his scuffle with the wall.

Garcia ran her fingertips along the side of the door, searching for any sort of mechanism she could meddle with and maybe short circuit into opening and finding nothing. There had to be something! Time began to ooze around her. It was broken by nothing but the calm tone of Jack reciting a tale about playing hide-and-seek with his dad, Henry’s whimpering, and the sound of Rossi muttering curses under his breath with his nails scratching against the sheer cement.

“Rossi,” Garcia said finally as she slumped to the floor, completely spent. Defeated. It was too much. All this fear, all this waiting, and this is how it ended. “ _Dave_.”

He looked at her, and there was the wildness of a much younger man in his eyes, glowing with the determination to fight to the bitter end and then some. “We’re not giving up,” he hissed, gaze darting along the floor for anything they could use to escape.

“Dad always says don’t give up,” Jack said dully. “But he did once. He gave up on finding me because I picked the best spot to hide and he couldn’t see me.”

“Where did you hide, hun?” Garcia asked, because at least this way Jack would die thinking of his dad and oh god that thought hurt so much it shouldn’t even be allowed. Rossi’s head thumped against the wall, and he made a broken kind of noise that chilled her. It was hopeless.

“I hid in the very top of my wardrobe,” Jack answered, eyes tracking Rossi’s movements as the man slid down the wall and hid his hands in his face. “Just sat there. Dad opened the door and everything, but he didn’t see me. Are we going to die?”

Garcia went to reassure him, to lie, at the exact same time Henry looked up and spoke: “Uncle Spence says that’s the best place to hide if someone is after me. He says people never look up.”

A sob rose in her throat, and she shuffled across the cold floor to hug them both. Rossi was still for an eternity until his head jerked up and he stared at them, grinning maniacally with the whites of his eyes showing.

“What?” she asked nervously.

“Reid may have just saved our lives,” he replied, laughing somewhat hysterically and tilting his head back to stare at the low ceiling.

She looked up as well. “Oh,” she said. Then she realized what he was saying. Oh! _Reid, you wonderful man, I could kiss you,_ she thought with a gasp. “The roof!”

“Jack, I’m going to boost you and I need you to punch the ceiling as hard as you can, understand, my man?” Rossi explained, scooping up the gangly eight-year-old as he nodded grimly. Garcia watched with her heart in her mouth as Jack slammed his fist into the roof, grunting with the effort.

The roof shifted. It _shifted_. “It a fake roof,” Jack declared, poking at it again. “It’s just wood!” He stood on Rossi’s shoulders and heaved, popping the panel up and out and leaving a dark space that he scrambled up into, peering out cheekily like a cat in a tree. “We can get out!”

Rossi grabbed Henry, almost throwing the boy in his haste to pass him up to Jack, before turning to Garcia. “Want me to throw you too?” he teased, winking.

She stepped back, aware of what she had to do now. She wasn’t going to make it up there anyway, not in that tiny space, and there was so much more she could be doing here. “Rossi…”

His face dropped and turned serious. “Penelope, don’t you dare,” he warned her.

She looked down, eyes brimming with tears she wasn’t willing to let him see. “I’m the only one who can contact the others and the only one with a map. If I can reach them on the intercom, I can lead them out. Without me, they’re lost. And Emily… she’s dying, Rossi. She was shot, I heard it happen. You can’t reach her in time without me.”

This was her job. To stay behind. To be their guide.

Rossi’s face had paled with the information about Emily. “The gas…”

Garcia shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Get up there and tell me if there’s an entrance point for gas to get in. We can block it off or disconnect it. There’s no vent in here to release it. The walls and floor are solid. He likes to scare us. He tried to tell us Emily and Morgan are dead, but they’re not. He bluffs. We both know I _have_ to do this.”

There was a long moment where she was sure he was going to push the issue, and when he stepped forward with his arm outstretched she flinched back as though expecting him to shake her. Instead, he pulled her into a warm hug, engulfing her in the familiar scent of cologne and coffee. “You are the bravest of us all, Penelope Garcia,” he said quietly into her ear, before brushing his lips against her cheek in a dry kiss.

She nodded, sobbing for real now as he grabbed the opening and pulled himself up with a grunt of pain. Jack helped with a hand on his collar.

“Miss Garcia? Are you coming?” Jack called down, his face a white blur beyond her tears.

“I’ve got work to do, Jack baby, then I’ll be right after you,” she replied, smiling sweetly and hoping she didn’t look like she never expected to see them again.

Rossi called something down about there being no gas line and something else she wasn’t ready to hear that might have been a goodbye, and then she was horribly, helplessly alone. She let herself cry for just a little longer, then shook herself sensible.

Time to get to work.

 

* * *

 

Emily opened her eyes to a fading pain. Morgan was hovering over her, his face ashen, and she thought that the last time she’d seen him so frightened was when she was dying under his hands.

Then she remembered.

“Reid’s dead,” she told him calmly, feeling the pain ease, an odd pressure on her stomach numbing it. “Reid’s dead.”

“No he’s not, it was a hallucination,” Morgan replied, leaning down more, the pressure increasing as he went. She thought about telling him to stop it. She thought about pointing out that she couldn’t really feel it anymore anyway.

“He was seven,” she said instead, seeing his face turn from frightened to agonised in the blink of an eye.  

“No,” he whispered, hands slipping off her, and she passed out again.

 

* * *

 

He sprawled with Elle’s weight heavy on his back right before the corridor around them exploded. When the dust settled, he couldn’t hear, couldn’t see; weighed down with rubble and Elle and pain. Finally, he managed to ease his way out from under it all, shaking his head and feeling rock and dirt cascade out of his hair. His ears rung with the reverberation of the explosion.

As he scrubbed a hand over his face, a shadow flickered over his eyes.

His could see a shadow. He could _see_.

But he couldn’t spare a moment to celebrate. He reached down and carefully felt around for Elle, desperately hoping to find her shaking her own hair clean, furious and swearing. Instead, he found her sticky with warm blood. He ran his hand slowly over her. She lay loose and broken, and he had to push away haunting thoughts of concussions and spinal injuries and irreversible damage. But she was breathing and that was calming. He clung to that.

“Elle?” he called, hearing his voice echo back to him from miles away. He didn’t shake her, grimly aware that she would have taken most of the force of the blast to her spine. Instead, he gently felt his way up her back, running his fingers through her hair to search for a head injury.

_Her hair’s short now,_ he noted numbly, the spiky locks slipping cleanly through his fingers. _I’d very much like to see that… how she’s changed since I saw her last._

_How we’ve all changed._

Finally, he found the wound behind her right ear, a section of skull that gave way very slightly under his hand and oozed wetly around it.

_Damn,_ he thought. He sat very still, waiting, for what felt like an impossibly long time, until the murky shapes around him began to clear very slightly and the sound of his breathing lengthened and closed in on him. The groan of the compromised ceiling buckling dangerously above them galvanised him into action. _I don’t have a choice,_ he realized as he looked down at the fuzzy shape of her. _I have to move her._

“Sorry, Greenaway,” he said out loud, realizing how furiously against the idea of being carried she would be. “But I’m not leaving you here.” He’d left enough of himself behind in this hellhole today. And his team was absolutely the best part of himself. His team and his son.

He crouched in front of her, pulling her arms over his shoulder and tugging her up onto his back, then straightened carefully with her limp weight on his hips. Head lolling against his shoulder, it oozed warm trails of blood down his neck. They made slow, agonising progress. The thump of her heart was steady and reassuring against his back. He stumbled a few times, always managing to straighten with a dogged determination that Dave would have been proud to see.

Dave. He hadn’t even thought of his friend this whole time, he’d been so focused on the younger members of the team—and the women, murmured a cool voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like Emily—but if anyone was going to find some novel way of getting out of here and making a fool of the unsub at the same time, it was probably Dave.

A light glinting ahead stood out brightly in the murky shadows of his vision, and he hurried towards it. Running one hand over the wall, he hissed in relief at the rough grating of an intercom speaker under his fingertips.

“Hotch here. Is anyone there?” he called out, too worried about not being able to pick Elle up again to put her down and rest.

Silence.

Hotch pressed his head against the wall, muscles aching, mentally preparing to begin the endless slog again. “I have Greenaway with me. We’ve taken hits, is anyone there? Sound off.”

_“Hotch! Sir!”_ Garcia. Alive, and by the sound of her voice, overwhelmed to hear from him. _“Oh gosh, sir. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice. And Elle? Elle, really?”_

“Garcia.” He wondered if he could ease Elle down without aggravating any injuries she might have. “What’s your position? Are you injured? Who else have you spoken to?”

There was a long pause, and in it he recognised the familiar sound of Garcia deciding just how much information he actually needed. It was achingly reminiscent of when her and Reid would work together to hide some petty indiscretion from him or Gideon, the both of them terrible liars. _“You said you’re hurt?”_ she said slowly.

There was no point in lying. If she was nearby and they found each other, he couldn’t lead her into further danger without her knowing the full extent of his disabilities. “I was gassed. My vision is severely impaired. Elle is unconscious; I don’t know how serious her injuries are.”

_Serious enough,_ he thought but he didn’t say it. Not to Garcia. Not yet.

Garcia didn’t shriek or cry or panic and that more than anything drove home how damning this all was, the extent of the danger they were in. He wondered vaguely just what she had to have seen or heard that made his injuries so easy for her to accept.

_“Rossi is alive and mostly okay. I’m still in my cell, uninjured,”_ she answered finally, and he almost laughed at how Garcia that was. She’d found the best way to remain unhurt and help without physically being in the firing line. Just another day at work, really. _“I have a map. I can guide you.”_

She was getting a raise. He didn’t care how, but whatever they were paying her, they were doubling it.

“Can you guide me to the centre?” he asked, trying to keep his voice composed. “If I move from intercom to intercom, can you guide me like that?”

_“Yes,”_ she replied. _“But first, I need you to follow my instructions.”_

“Where?”

A deep sighing breath was his reply, hitching slightly. _“To Morgan and Emily. They need help, now.”_

* * *

 

The sick, all consuming dread was still there and still eating away at him, but he could focus past it now. Focus past it and onto Emily, who was slipping away between his fingers again and this time he was the cause of it. Morgan shuddered, feeling the wet shirt he was scrunching into the hole in her stomach slip as his arms shook, trying not to think too much about her final words before she’d passed out. If he thought too much about that quiet ‘Spencer’s dead,’ there was no guarantee he wouldn’t look up and see the ghastly spectre from before looming over them with his crooked smile and horrific injury.

“Come on Em,” he uttered in a voice that was a shade too desperate to be his. “You’re not going to let this kill you, you’re not going to let me kill you. You’re stronger than me. So much stronger and so much better, and you’re going to hang on so you can return the favour later.” He couldn’t afford to fall apart over his actions under the influence of whatever this unsub had pumped him full of, not yet. He needed to save her, or find someone to save her, and then he could succumb.

_“Derek?”_ Garcia’s voice was as beautiful as ever, and he swallowed heavily before answering.  She’d never look at him the same again after today. He’d lost everything in this ordeal.

“Babygirl, talk to me,” he choked out, his voice a weak imitation of their usual loving banter. He heard her whimper slightly, the pain she was feeling audible even through the terrible connection.

_“I got hold of Hotch, gorgeous. I got hold of Hotch, and he is on his way to you right now. You’re not going to be alone much longer,”_ she said, and he felt his face split into a mocking parody of a grin. Thank god for Aaron Hotchner. Salvation in a suit and tie.

“That’s amazing, Pen, you’re fantastic,” he called out, easing up his shirt to check the wound. It still oozed blood sluggishly. He was kneeling in a pool of Emily’s blood at this point, shorts sticking to his legs wetly and making hollow slapping noises against his skin as he moved to stop his knees from cramping. “What’s his state?”

_“He’s… he’s been hurt,”_ she replied. _“He said he couldn’t see very well; he was tear gassed. Oh my god, Derek. The bastard gassed him.”_

Morgan was shaking again, and this time with an emotion he couldn’t face without hating himself. Hotch was eternally solid and dependable; the knowledge that even he’d been beaten by this unsub was… darkly relieving. Morgan wasn’t the only one who’d failed here today.

“Fuck.”

_“He has Elle with him. She’s unconscious, but he didn’t say why.”_

Well, that was unexpected. Morgan shook that information off, deciding to return to it later. “Does he know about Reid?”

Silence, then: _“Know what about Reid?”_

Oh. Oh shit. “Nothing, Pen.”

_“Know what about Reid?”_ and that time, her voice shrieked. He may have just done the one thing that shattered Penelope Garcia’s resolve, told her the one thing she couldn’t possibly handle.

“It’s fine, I don’t know for sure, it’s just something Emily said. But she’s hurt Garcia, she’s hurt and confused and…”

_“He’s dead isn’t he?”_ She was terrifyingly calm.

“We don’t know that.”

_“Yes we do. Because if he wasn’t, he’d be out of here already. He’s dead and you know it.”_

And that was the truth of it. The unsub couldn’t afford to have Reid at his best running this maze because Reid at even half of his best could have done it in his sleep. He was too good. He’d have been out of here in an hour, an hour and a half tops, and they’d already be home and this would be a fading nightmare. The fact that they weren’t suggested that Reid was no longer a contender anymore.

“I mean, I was always going to be the first to die,” said Reid from behind him, and Morgan closed his eyes rather than turn and face the return of his hallucinations. “You already see me in every victim. That one’s too smart, that one’s too young, and there’s me in all of them. At least I died at a stranger’s hands and not yours. Not like Emily.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Morgan roared, hearing Garcia say something in a shocked voice but not registering it. “Get out of my head, you’re not real!”

“I beg to differ,” said a cool, calm voice, and Morgan opened his eyes to see Hotch limping down the hall towards them, bleeding and exhausted but _so fucking real_. Spencer’s voice vanished as though Morgan had reached out and snapped off a dial. “Emily?”

“Alive, still,” Morgan said, risking a glance behind him and finding the hallway clear. “Elle?”

“Same.” Hotch eased Elle down carefully next to Emily. Morgan noted absently that she was more tanned since the last time he’d seen her, even if under that tan her skin was pale and clammy. Her hair was shorter too, curling around her ears in a pixie cut that suited her.

She’d been doing well without them.

Hotch didn’t look accusingly at him or the gun on the floor near his knee, and for a moment, Morgan felt relief because it meant that he either didn’t know it was him who shot her, or he didn’t blame him. Then he saw the way Hotch’s eyes looked straight through him, and he knew. The fresh memory of Garcia’s words burned. _“Oh my god, Derek. The bastard gassed him.”_

Blind. Hotch was blind. Not forgiving. There was no absolution for Morgan’s sins here.

“This needs to end,” he whispered, looking down at the two still women on the floor in front of them. “We need to end this.”

“I agree,” Hotch said, and Garcia made an affirmative sort of noise from the intercom.

_“You guys aren’t far from the middle,”_ she pointed out shakily, her voice fading in and out as she moved from the map to the intercom and back again. _“I can guide you easily from here.”_

“You should go,” Hotch said in a lowered voice, tilting his head towards Morgan. “I… I still can’t see much more than rough shapes. I’m in no condition to face whatever he’s got waiting for us.”

Morgan was already shaking his head. “Man, he did a real number on my head,” he admitted, feeling his career and everything he’d worked his whole life for crumble with the bitter words.  There was no coming back from this. “I barely even know if you’re real. One of us needs to stay with them. We can’t move Emily, and we shouldn’t move Elle.” He picked up the gun, shuddering as his fingers slipped over the grip, before passing it to Hotch, who took it reluctantly. “It has to be you, Hotch.”

Hotch nodded once, and looked down at their friends. “Look after them,” he said finally, standing and squaring his shoulders.

“Always,” Morgan replied, watching his boss disappear into the darkness.

He wondered if he’d ever see him again.


	8. An Absolute State

Hotch moved through the maze, eyes focused ahead and grimly determined to end this once and for all. One more intercom lay between him and the centre, and he hoped that the unsub was cocky enough to wait in the middle for one of them to reach him. He wanted to see the look on the man’s face when Hotch found him and repaid him for Reid, for Elle, for JJ and Morgan and everything they’d lost in this maze and would never regain.

And he wanted, more than anything, to know _why_. Why had the man done this to them? Why had he dragged them from their homes and families and run them through this sick gauntlet for his own amusement? What grievous harm had they done him that deserved this kind of retribution?

He thought of Jack and shuddered, wondering if he was still home alone and scared. Hopefully he had woken up and called his aunt. Alerted someone to the fact that his father was gone, and he was alone. _I’ll see you soon, Jack,_ he silently promised. _I won’t die in this goddamn maze. I’ll come home to you._

He was going to go home and help his team heal from this nightmare. He was going to put them back together because that was his job, even if at the moment it felt like there was no coming back from this.

He was going home to bury those they had lost.

But first… first he was going to repay the unsub for every hurt he’d done them, and then some.

 

* * *

 

JJ padded silently through the corridors, barely even aware of where she was anymore. She’d been walking for hours, her bare feet raw and aching, hunger and thirst clawing at her insides. None of it held a bar to the agony of her grief, the knowledge that she’d failed to keep Spence safe again. Every time she let him out of her sight something like this happened.

Except it wouldn’t happen again, because this was it. The worst had now officially come to play. She would never have to worry about letting him out of her sight again, because he’d never be _in_ sight again. She’d said goodbye to him for the last time as he’d strolled out of the bullpen on Friday, his nose tucked in a book and barely acknowledging her. And two more. There were two more of her friends in this shithole that had died. So many lost.

She kept walking because at this point, if she stopped, she wasn’t sure if she could find the strength to start again.

 

* * *

 

Morgan counted Emily’s breaths as her chest rose and fell and wondered how many more of them she had left in her. How many of them he’d stolen from her. Elle shifted slightly, and her mouth opened in a dry moan. He flinched, recognising the crackle in her throat as oncoming dehydration. The burn of his own thirst grew at the thought of it. If they didn’t get out of here soon, they’d all die of thirst anyway.

He had faith in Hotch. If any of them were fated to get out of here and save the rest, it was Hotch. The man wouldn’t give up if it meant getting home to his son, and that thought was reassuring. But then again, Emily was strong too, and so was Reid, and that hadn’t helped them in the end. They’d still fallen.

Hotch was just a man, still as vulnerable and fallible as the rest of them.

Morgan closed his eyes and pushed the dark thoughts away, recognising the taint of the drugs still in his system in the pessimistic train of thinking. He focused on counting her breathing again, using it to ward away the terror of the maze.

_Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty…_

* * *

 

Elle’s head was exploding. She was pretty sure that someone had reached in while she was asleep and grabbed a chunk of her brain and squeezed as hard as possible, leading to her driving, splitting agony.

“Gah,” she groaned, opening her eyes and immediately regretting it as the dim light seared into her head. “Gaaaah.”

“Good to know you’re as talkative as ever,” replied a familiar voice, exhausted and broken.

She turned her head, ignoring the waves of pain that followed, and glared at Morgan through narrowed eyes. “Where’s Hotch?” she croaked, becoming abruptly aware of how dry her throat was. The last thing she remembered was… JJ. They were talking to JJ, and then nothing.

“Gone ahead to try and find a way out of here,” Morgan responded, not moving from his spot. She followed the line of his arms down to a motionless form crumpled under him.

“She okay?” she asked, not recognising the pale woman. She didn’t really look okay.

Morgan looked down at the woman with a blank expression, before meeting Elle’s gaze again. “She’s got about as much of a chance of surviving as the rest of us do,” he stated bluntly, eyes impossible to discern in the gloom.

“A pretty good chance then,” Elle said, thinking of the determined set of Hotch’s shoulders and the snap to his voice when he made up his mind. These days she had faith in very few things, but she still had faith in Aaron Hotchner.

 

* * *

 

Reid opened his eyes, and he was standing in the middle of a room with no memory of having gotten up to walk there. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he knew how to move any of his limbs anymore. His arms hung at his side like dead weights and his head buzzed oddly, thoughts scattering like an ants’ nest disturbed by a careless kick. He closed his eyes for a moment to try and pull himself together, and when he opened them there was a man standing front of him, smiling. Reid blinked and stared, unable to talk past the buzzing, his brain useless.

The man held his hand out, something black and cold held on his palm invitingly. His eyes refusing to cooperate, Reid couldn’t focus on what it was enough to make out the shape, but he knew in his gut that he didn’t really want anything to do with it. It wasn’t much of an emotion, just a numb sort of sensation, but it was the most he had at the moment.

“Pick up the gun, Dr. Reid,” the man said, voice smooth and invasive and coiling into his mind like smoke.

“No,” Reid tried to say, but he fumbled the word and the man was gone.

He was holding the gun.

He didn’t really mind.

 

* * *

 

Garcia connected the last wire and waited patiently for Hotch to speak to her for the final time. This was it. If they had any chance of getting out of here alive, it was in this last moment. She thought about telling Hotch about Jack and Henry and Rossi, but pushed the thought away. They needed him clear-headed, and god knows she knew how the very presence of those kids had driven her mad with fear and worry. She couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be for Jack’s dad, especially when he couldn’t see or hold his son to reassure himself that the boy was fine.

_“Garcia?”_ Hotch sounded calm. He sounded ready.

“Hey, Mr. Bossman,” she replied, keeping her tone light. “This is it then.”

_“Directions, Garcia.”_ For a moment it was almost like being in the office, being told to focus. It was a nice moment. It was a short moment.

She gave him the directions twice before taking a deep breath. “Good luck, sir. I know you’ll be fine, and I look forward to being rescued by you at the end of this.”

_“I’ll be back for you all soon. See you then, Penelope.”_

Then he was gone. And he’d called her Penelope.

Was that a good thing?

She didn’t know. “Please be safe,” she whispered like a prayer and crossed her fingers against her heart.

 

* * *

 

Rossi groaned as another wave of throbbing pain shot up his arm. The skin of his arm felt uncomfortably tight and warm to the touch if he brushed his uninjured hand against it. Brilliant. An infection was just what he needed when they still had hours of crawling through thick cobwebs and layers of dust to reach their destination.

Not that there was any guarantee they were still heading in the right direction. It was understandably hard to navigate in a pitch black roof space with nothing to use as a guide but mouldy beams and a half remembered map. There was the haunting possibility of overshooting the centre and ending up hopelessly lost.

There was no way to know for sure.

“Are you okay, Uncle Dave?” Jack called ahead to him, and Rossi shook himself, realized he’d slowed his pace. He wasn’t just doing this for himself; he was getting the kids out as well.

“Fine, Jack,” he said back, turning slightly to make sure they were both alright. Their faces were pale smudges in the gloom, hovering in mid-air like ghosts. Another hot wave pulsed up his arm and he bit his lip to stop from swearing. Out loud, anyway.

“There’s a light,” Jack announced, and Rossi realized that the reason he could see them was the dim reflection from a bright square on the floor ahead.

He really must be slipping to have missed that.

“Stay behind me,” he warned them as he crawled quickly towards the opening, a lightly meshed vent, and peered through. The room underneath was bigger than any he’d faced in the maze and seemingly empty. “Wait until I call you before coming near the opening,” he said to the boys, pulling the mesh back and lightly dropping down, flinching as his weight landed on cramped legs. Above him there was a scuffling as both boys ignored him and leaned out the hole, clearly eager to be out of the dark. He rolled his eyes before reaching up and helping them down. Henry blinked and rubbed at his own eyes, moving away as Rossi helped Jack down. He bit back a fierce growl as Jack’s foot caught his hand on the way down.

“Uncle Spence?” Henry called suddenly, and Rossi span around. _Thank god,_ he thought at first, the possibility of having a second pair of eyes and hands helping him keep the boys safe a promising one. He felt that relief right until his eyes fell on the familiar man standing oddly still in the doorway, and he noted the vacant, unheeding expression his friend was wearing.

In all the time Rossi had known him, Spencer Reid had never looked at them like that. Never looked like that, not once.

“Reid?” Rossi reached for Henry as he warily called out. Another man stepped out from the doorway behind Reid and smiled coldly. Reid didn’t move. Rossi’s guts twisted with a sharp bite of fear that he didn’t fully understand.

His head swam, his arm throbbed, Reid was looking at them all like they didn’t even fucking exist, and Rossi felt too damn unsettled to comprehend any of it.

“Hello, David,” said the bastard responsible for everything that had happened to them. “Nice of you to join us.”

It was then that Rossi noticed the gun.


	9. The Heaviest Burden

“Reid,” Rossi said carefully, his focus locked on his younger teammate and guts turning to ice at the emptiness on the other man’s face. Reid didn’t so much as twitch, eyes blank and staring, his gun held loosely in a manner that no one trained by Aaron Hotchner would ever hold a weapon. “Reid, look at me.” Unsaid was the begging racing through Rossi’s head. Unsaid was the frantic, _fuck, Reid. Please look at me. Let me know you’re in there._

Unsaid was the question, _are you in there?_

_What has he done to you?_

Reid twitched and turned his head to stare at Rossi with glazed eyes. He moved jerkily; a human marionette being controlled by an uncaring puppeteer. Something lurched in Rossi’s chest at the sight. Bile burned his throat. Something was wrong. Something was horribly, terribly wrong.  

“Amazing, isn’t it?” the unsub asked coldly, still standing with Reid as a shield between him and Rossi’s rapidly disappearing control. “How without free will, a person is becomes nothing. Want me to show you what I can make him do?”

_No._

Rossi choked back a snarl, staring at the man who had taunted them all so brutally. He couldn’t see if the unsub was armed, whether moving over there would result in Reid being gunned down from behind. He already knew this unsub was a coward. He wanted to kill the sick fuck. If it wasn’t for the kids, wasn’t for Reid and his helpless state, he _would_ kill him.

But the gun was in Reid’s hand, and Rossi knew what was going to happen next.

“Are you going to tell him to shoot me?” Rossi said. Jack gasped next to him, his shaking reverberating up Rossi’s side. “You are, aren’t you? Because you’re a coward, too weak to pull the trigger yourself. You have to hide behind a drugged man. You planned this whole thing, and now you can’t even face us without using Reid as a shield.” The unsub laughed, a high grating noise, and shook his head. Rossi shifted uneasily, seeing something familiar in the eyes of the young man. He’d seen eyes like that before somewhere.

“You think this is what I planned?” the man snapped. “For you to be here in this final moment? You’re not even supposed to be here at all, you’re just a consolation prize. The great David Rossi, still second rate when compared to Jason Gideon.”

Gideon. He’d done this to get to… Gideon? The kid was barely twenty by the looks of him. How could he possibly have crossed paths with Gideon?

“You can let Reid and the boys go then, and we can discuss this,” Rossi offered, eyeing Reid carefully to try and gauge whether he was going to be of help at all if it came to a physical confrontation. Reid swayed, and Rossi doubted it. The kid was stoned out of his mind. “You don’t need them if you’ve got me. I’m your Gideon.”

Another laugh, still unsettling. “You don’t get it, do you? I wanted this to be the last betrayal, to give Jason Gideon what he gave me. The loss of everything. He took my father from me, first by creeping into his thoughts and becoming an obsession, and then by death.”

“You’re doing this because Agent Gideon killed your father?” The longer Rossi could keep him talking, the more likely Reid would snap out of whatever hold the unsub had on him. Hopefully. _Come on Spencer,_ he kept begging. _You haven’t failed me yet. Now’s a bad time to start._ The unsub moved forward as though trying to emphasize the importance of his next words, shoving Reid as he went to keep him in front. Reid stumbled slightly, and Rossi quietly hoped that the push would knock the gun from slack hands. It didn’t.

“I’m doing this because I didn’t get the opportunity to kill my father,” the unsub countered, smiling widely. Rossi stared him in the eyes with the sinking confirmation that the man was well and truly unhinged settling into him. “I was going to give Dr. Reid the chance I never got, thanks to Jason Gideon: the ultimate betrayal of a son to his father.”

Jesus. Nothing Rossi could say would reach the man; he was too firmly set on his path. But he could still distract him. “You didn’t make this maze, not all of it.”

A slow shake of the man’s head answered his question. “No. My father began it, before he was led astray by your team. He was always much better at creating dark little holes for people to die in, playing on their fears. Fear fascinated him, possibly because he never felt it himself. I merely finished what he started. Proved that I could be twice the man he could. He never got quite so close to you all as I have, even though he wanted to. And in the end, he failed as well. Instead of killing Jason Gideon, he merely broke him. Left the job unfinished.”

_Frank._

“Breitkopf?” Rossi exclaimed, unable to keep the shock out of his voice. “Frank Breitkopf was your father?”

The unsub’s face twisted. Rossi’s mistake. He shouldn’t have said his name.

The unsub snarled. Suddenly, he looked like the monster he truly was underneath. “In blood perhaps, but unsurprisingly he was a terrible role model. He was never a father. I don’t think he was capable. I tried to learn from him, but he was… difficult. What I ended up learning about him in the end, I learned from books after his death. Thank you for that, by the way, your novels were… informative.”

Rossi waited until the anger diverted the man from his task, before carefully inching forward onto his toes and calculating the distance between him and unsub. If he could reach him before he had time to react… “I wouldn’t,” the unsub said sharply, dropping his rant. “Dr. Reid, aim the gun at Agent Rossi. Finger on the trigger, please.”

Rossi froze as he was suddenly facing the end of a gun barrel held remarkably steady for a man who looked like he was on the losing end of a fatal dose of something nasty. “Reid,” he said slowly, his voice tense. “Spencer, don’t. Don’t listen to him. Listen to me. It’s Rossi.” Would he fire it if he was instructed? Did the man have a strong enough hold on him to make him shoot?

“Consider how easily I turned Agent Morgan against Agent Prentiss before you decide on your next move,” the unsub warned him, rocking back on his heels with a sneer.

Henry suddenly came to life under Rossi’s hand, jerking angrily. “Uncle Spence!” he shrieked, bolting forward. Rossi barely managed to hold him back. “Uncle Spence, stop! I don’t like it!”

Rossi went cold when the unsub’s eyes widened, delight stealing over his face. “Oh, I _missed_ that. See, this is my problem, I cut corners. I was never as precise in my work as dear old dad. Uncle Spence, how _droll_.”

“Don’t—” Rossi said, heart clenching in his throat and eyes locked on Reid’s face in a desperate plea for him to wake up, but it was too late.

“The boy, Dr. Reid. Aim the gun at the boy. And don’t miss.”

 

* * *

 

“The boy, Dr. Reid. Aim the gun at the boy. And don’t miss.”

Henry.

_No._

Reid blinked, the world around him muted and insubstantial and the only thing tethering his mind to his body the cold, enticing voice that wove through him. _No._

He shook his head slightly, and the room came into harsh focus. Rossi stared at him with beseeching eyes and Henry was fighting in his grasp, screaming. “No,” he said firmly, finding his voice, and seeing Rossi practically crumple with relief.

Henry was crying. The bastard had made Henry cry. Reid felt his grip on the gun tighten, shaking with the effort to try and regain control of his thoughts. Rossi was talking, but none of it was making any sense, his words filtering away into nothing before reaching Reid’s ears.

_Turn the gun on the unsub, turn the gun on the unsub,_ he chanted desperately to himself as he felt his mind begin to splinter again, dragging him back into the fog.

The voice was back.

_“Turn the gun on yourself then, Dr. Reid.”_

Reid shuddered and swung the gun around.

 

* * *

 

There was screaming. Hotch could hear screaming.

He could hear Jack.

“No,” he moaned, hurtling forward and flying through the corridors, his gun in his hands and heart thudding so hard it almost drowned out the beat of his footsteps. _Jack can’t be here. Jack’s home safe, not here._

He had to force himself to slow as the corridor ended abruptly in a doorway with bright, harsh light streaming from it. Hotch held the gun, squinting to try and bring the doorway into focus. He was horribly aware that he was going into this blind, with his son in the firing line.

The stakes were too high. He couldn’t do this again.

Pressing against the door, he listened intently, almost shaking with the sick tension of the moment. He could hear two children, both terrified. Jack and Henry. That sick fuck. That _dead,_ sick fuck. He’d brought their children into this hellhole. He’d _dared_ to touch their families. It was suddenly a lot easier to focus as intense, white-hot rage turned the moment sharp with clarity.

“Don’t, oh god no—” begged a voice that he recognised with a rush. Rossi. Rossi was in there. That was… reassuring.

The fact that he was begging was not.

Hotch swallowed before stepping out into the blinding whiteness of the room. The white was broken only by indistinct, fuzzy forms. Two larger ones, near to him and standing close enough together that their shapes blurred into one oddly shaped mass. Another moving dark mass slightly further away, two smaller ones by it. Rossi. And the children.

He hoped.

He raised the gun, aiming it at the centre of the closest form. The sick realization that he couldn’t fire thundered through him. He couldn’t tell who he was aiming at, or whether the bullet would hit someone else if he fired. He could miss completely and hit Jack or Henry…

Too many friendlies. He was helpless.

Rossi’s voice changed abruptly, the begging tone gone but no less intent without it. “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot, Reid. It’s not right, what you’re doing isn’t right.”

Hotch was paralysed, unable to tell if Rossi was speaking to him or to Reid—why would he be begging Reid not to shoot? Is he armed? What the hell is going on? —, and not willing to take the momentous gamble that he was trying to tell Hotch where to aim. He aimed at the left side of the mass anyway, holding his finger ready but away from the trigger just in case. It’s not right. Did he trust that?

Soft footsteps sounded behind him, and a familiar gasp.

 

* * *

 

Reid’s arm twitched slightly as he snapped to with a jolt, the slick metal of the gun clattering against his teeth as he moved. It left an acrid taste in his mouth, cutting his tongue.

His finger was on the trigger.

He pressed his nail against the trigger and traced the outline of it. Tensed. _What am I doing?_

_Oh._

He swallowed hard, feeling gun oil coat the back of his throat, bitter and cloying.

_“Pull the trigger,”_ someone murmured into his ear. Reid felt himself lean towards that voice. He felt his finger tighten. He thought of pulling the trigger.

He didn’t want to. But he didn’t exactly _not_ want to either.

Oddly, he wasn’t scared. It was very much like he was observing from far away, disconnected from it all. He should have been terrified.

He wasn’t anything.

Henry was still watching him with those broken eyes, and Reid closed his own so he didn’t have to see them anymore, something small inside him curling up and crying out at the sight. He woke up, just a little.

_Not Henry, you bastard, not Henry._

_Shoot the unsub, Reid. Get it together, shoot him._

_Whatever you do, don’t pull the trigger yet. Not in front of Henry. Don’t leave him with that._

The clamour of a gun firing still didn’t drown out the endless sound of Henry screaming.

 

* * *

 

JJ knew the sound of Henry screaming, even when it was distorted by the echoes of the maze’s corridors. Nothing was going to stop her from reaching her son. She ran as though the hounds of hell themselves were on her heels, half hoping that the screams continued because, as agonising as they were to listen to, while he was screaming, he was alive and she could find him.

She didn’t even want to think about what was scaring him so badly that he was screaming like that. All she wanted to do was find him and scoop him into her arms and never let go so nothing could ever frighten him again. She wouldn’t let it.

Sliding around a corner, she almost threw herself at Hotch’s back, not recognising him for a moment. He was stock-still, a few steps into a brightly lit room, his face uncertain and eyes unfocused with his gun held out at the ready. She moved forward quickly, unable to hold back a gasp as she stepped out from behind him and saw the nightmare in front of them.

Rossi staring at Hotch with Henry held tightly by one hand. Jack at his side with his eyes locked on his dad and face hopeful.

A stranger facing Rossi, clearly unaware of his death standing four feet behind him, and Spencer next to the unsub. Alive. Spence, _alive._

Spence, her Spence, with a gun held to his mouth and looking torn between a numb sort of acceptance and indecisiveness. He looked like someone trying to decide what movie to watch, not a man holding a gun to his head as though seconds away from pulling the trigger.

The sight took away all the air in the room, and she barely managed to hold back her own shriek.

Her gasp must have alerted the unsub, because he turned and looked at them. His face was instantly etched into her mind with indelible ink, impossible for her to ever forget. Hotch must have heard her too, because he turned his head ever so slightly and said in a calm voice that betrayed the urgency of the situation, “JJ, which one?”

A glance at his face and the blistering around reddened eyes told her everything she needed to know. “Left,” she said coldly, locking her eyes with the man responsible for this. Behind him, Rossi flung his arms around the boys and dropped, throwing them all to the ground.

Hotch fired.

Her eyes were the last thing the man ever saw before a bullet slammed into his skull.

 

* * *

 

Hotch fired, and they both dropped. Rossi wasn’t aware he’d even made a noise until a harsh sort of cry filtered back to him over the ringing in his ears, and Jack peered up at him with shocked eyes.

“Reid!” he shouted, pushing himself up and sprinting towards the two still forms. Hotch lowered his gun looking sick as JJ headed straight for Henry. Jack hurtled past, leaping over the body of the unsub and slamming into Hotch with the kind of force that would have terrified Rossi to see if Hotch was any less proficient with a weapon.

“Reid!” Rossi called again as he reached their youngest member. Reid was sitting in an oddly slumped mass, as though his strings had been cut and he had been thrown aside, discarded. He didn’t react. Rossi wondered if he could.

“Did I hit him?” Hotch said and, although his voice stayed steady, Rossi could see his skin rapidly turning grey with fright. He clung to Jack like a lifeline, hands white against his son’s shoulders. “Dave, christ, did I hit him?”

Rossi splayed a hand on their youngest agent’s chest and pulled him up, skimming the pads of his fingertips across his belly. No blood. Nor on his back. Fuck. The relief almost sent him reeling. “No. He’s fine.”

But he wasn’t.

Rossi slid a hand under Reid’s chin and tilted it up so he could peer into the glazed hazel eyes. His pupils were blown wide, the whites of his eyes stained red. Rossi swore, feeling the heat radiating off the man, his skin clammy with sweat. If the infection in Rossi was warmth, Reid was an inferno. Still holding the gun, and Rossi took it from him with steady hands and put it aside, the barrel glistening with bloodied saliva. There was blood to match on Reid’s mouth, a thin line trickling from the corner of it. He pressed two fingers into the skin of Reid’s throat to checking the erratic stutter of his pulse. It raced unpredictably under his fingers, faltered, slowed. Rossi feared the moment it stopped.

Whatever that bastard had given him, he’d given him way too much. He could die here still.

He was dying here still.

“Rossi?” Reid croaked abruptly, his gaze sharpening slightly. “Henry’s scared.”

Thank god. He was still in there.

“He’s okay,” Rossi assured him, looking up to try and catch one someone’s attention. “Hotch, JJ. We need medics now. _Now_.”

JJ was suddenly at his side, slipping a cool hand under Reid’s head to support him. Reid slumped into her grip. The skin of his face slackened slightly, as though the muscles had failed. He looked, for a single long moment, as though he was dead.

“Reid, what did he give you? Do you know?” she queried, shaking him gently. Reid’s mouth moved wordlessly. Rossi felt ill.

Rossi stood and almost bumped into Henry, who’d sidled up to press against his hip with his thumb in his mouth. “Can you see if there’s a phone or a computer around here?” she asked him. “Henry and I will stay with Reid.”

“Emily and Elle are hurt too,” Hotch informed them, leg brushing against Rossi as he moved past. Rossi glanced up and hissed to see his eyes up close, red and blistered. He’d known something was wrong as soon as Hotch had stepped out of that doorway and frozen, uncharacteristically indecisive even though the shot was clear. “Jack, come with me.” They vanished to begin the search.

Henry reached a sticky hand down to wrap around Spencer’s, gripping his godfather’s fingers tightly in his smaller palm. Reid’s mouth twitched in an almost smile. But, “Get Henry away,” Reid snapped suddenly, jerking his head to the side and almost head-butting JJ. “Get away.”

JJ looked up and met Rossi’s eyes, expression shocked. “He’s drugged,” Rossi explained, feeling Henry startle. “He’s not in his right mind—”

A rattling gasp tore from Reid’s lips and his head jerked again, the whites of his eyes showing as spittle slipped down his chin. “Seizure,” he choked. “Don’t let him see if it…”

His eyes rolled back and he curled into himself. Moaned.

It was their only warning of the onset of the fit before his back arched into a convulsion. JJ desperately tried to prevent his head from cracking against the floor. Rossi wasn’t sure how successful she was, hearing something echo meatily around the cold room.

“Fuck,” Rossi swore, and turned on his heel to sprint across the room, urgently searching for anything they could use to call for help. He was hauntingly aware of the other members of his team still fighting for survival.

Jack found it first, bursting through a door with his hand outstretched, panting. “I’ve got a phone!”

Help would soon be on its way.

Rossi hoped to god it would be in time.


	10. But Still Good

Elle signed herself out of the hospital as soon as she was medically able, not really keen on still being there when the rest of the BAU recovered enough from their various injuries to start making room visits. She just had one stop she wanted to make first.

“Is Dr. Reid able to receive visitors yet?” she asked the nurse manning the ICU desk.

“I’m sorry, but Dr. Reid was transferred into another unit this morning,” the nurse responded,tapping quickly at her computer. “He’s not receiving visitors under medical advice. I’m afraid I can’t help you any more than that.”

Elle frowned. On one hand, out of ICU was great news. On the other, if he’d just been moved into a ward, he’d be taking visitors. “If I leave a letter for him, could you see it gets delivered?” she asked instead, smiling warily. The nurse paused for a moment, clearly tempted to say no but eventually smiling and nodding her assent. Passing Elle a sheet of paper, pen and envelope, she scurried off to deal without another frustrated looking family member banging the bell. Elle scrawled out a quick note, hesitating before ending it with her phone number in case he wanted to contact her. She doubted he would, but she’d already failed to say goodbye to him once.

That had almost ended up being permanent. She had no intention of making that mistake again.

Tucking the letter into the envelope, Elle leaned over the desk and placed it by the keyboard, glancing at the screen as she did so. Reid’s file was still open with the transfer request highlighted and bookended by a blinking cursor.

_Trans. Psych unit pend drug treatment. Patient presented with toxic psychosis manifesting as visual/haptic hallucinations, thought disorders after being given near-lethal dose of Hyoscine hydrobromide._

She closed her eyes for a moment as the horror of that sunk into her.

Looked like some of them hadn’t quite escaped the maze just yet.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Pretty Boy,” Morgan said cautiously as he edged into the darkened room with a balloon shaped like some sort of yellow sponge, courtesy of Garcia. “How you holding up?”

Reid was pacing by the window, the light casting long shadows onto the sunken planes of his face. Morgan swallowed hard at his appearance. Hair that had bypassed wild and gone straight on to chaotic and his eyes red-rimmed and anxious. He looked… sick. Strange.

Scared.

“Morgan, how is everyone?” he chattered, words running together with the speed of his speech.

“Fine, they’re all fine. Emily’s finished her last surgery, but she’s going to be out of it for a while.” Morgan stepped closer to tie the balloon to the foot of the bed, noting with trepidation the way that Reid twitched defensively away from him. “Hotch is pretty doped up, but they think he’ll be fine. JJ wanted to visit. They said you didn’t want to see her.”

“She’ll bring Henry,” Reid said absently, carding his fingers through his hair and dropping heavily into a chair before bolting back out of it and resuming his pacing. “Can’t bring Henry.”

“Henry wants to see you too, man. The last time he saw you, you were really sick. He needs to know you’re okay.” Morgan needed to know that too. The shaking, pacing man in front of him was not doing a whole lot to assuage his fears.

Reid shook his head viciously, taking a few steps towards Morgan and reaching out to touch his arm, before stepping back again. “Don’t,” he snapped instead, scowling darkly. “Don’t do this. You never touch when you’re not real, you just stand there and talk at me and say nothing and I want you to leave. Leave! Now! Getoutget _outgetoutoutout_!”

Morgan raised his hands, heart hammering in his throat, and tried to stretch his arm out to brush a finger against Reid’s skin. Nausea raged in his gut when the tall man jerked back from his hand as though it were red-hot. “Reid! I’m real. Here, touch me. I’m not a hallucination, I’m real!” He knew with horrible, sickening clarity what it was like to not be able to trust your own mind.

Reid opened his mouth to reply, and instead choked out a stream of nonsense words before stopping and looking dismayed and so helplessly lost that Morgan felt his heart stop from the pain of it. He could see Reid in the corridor again with his head blown open, smiling that vacant smile and offering Morgan the use of the brains he’d never use again.

He staggered back and stuttered something about getting a nurse, before leaving the room and its despondent inhabitant behind. Trying not to fall apart with the force of his own panic rattling him to his core.

He was failing.

 

* * *

 

Oddly, Morgan shooting her had turned out to be somewhat of a blessing in disguise.

Trauma induced amnesia. Emily had absolutely no recollection of anything that had happened that day. Her last memory was leaving the BAU after work and getting into her car. Her doctor said she’d probably never recover the memories. Of course, she could hardly thank Morgan for his part in helping her avoid the aftereffects of the nightmare they’d all lived, and that her friends were all struggling with, since she was a pretty big part of his own trauma.

And she knew he was drowning in it.

JJ was the first to visit after Emily woke up after surgery, head still buzzing from the pain medication and abdomen blessedly numb. Emily had taken one look at the pallor of JJ’s face and instantly offered her a go on the IV, sure that the other woman needed it a lot more.

“How is everyone else?” Emily asked, not missing for a moment the way that JJ’s eyes kept flickering back to the door where Will and Henry waited outside, or the way that Will was ostentatiously keeping Henry in sight of his mother at all times. They all had scars now.

“Hotch is getting released this afternoon, you’ll see him then no doubt,” JJ replied distractedly. “Morgan’s been home a week now, he’s… coping. Garcia is fine, and dealing with Morgan, otherwise she’d have been in here with bells on.”

“Dealing with Morgan?” Emily teased. JJ smiled, her eyes tired.

“He’s… coping. With her help. She wants to visit, but she wants to bring him too. And he’s resistant. I think he thinks you blame him.”

She was going to kick the big lug’s ass when she got out of here. For a smart guy, he was a real idiot. “Rossi? And Reid?”

JJ swallowed, and for a moment, her face paled even more. Emily hadn’t thought it would be possible, but she managed it. “Rossi’s still here. He got a nasty infection in his hand, and they’re talking about needing to do surgery on it. They don’t know if he’s going to regain full use yet.”

Emily didn’t let up, narrowing her eyes at what JJ was leaving out rather than what she was saying. “And Reid?” No one was saying what had happened to him. Just that he was alive.

She was determined to find out.

“Isn’t letting anyone in to see him,” JJ admitted. “Well… Morgan got in, but ever since then Spence has been refusing to see anyone.”

“Where is he?”

An hour later, Emily tried to look casual as she wheeled her way up the hall, hoping that her wheelchair and thin hospital gown helped her blend in. It seemed to work as the busy doctors and nurses moved around and passed her without a word, going about their business. She rolled her way up to the door number she’d managed to wheedle out of JJ and tapped only once on it before pushing it open and entering. The room was dark, the TV turned off and muted shadows flickered through the tightly closed curtains. The only sign of life was a small lump in the hospital bed, curled up into a ball under the sheets.

“Spencer?” she called, closing the door behind her and wheeling her way over to the bed. He didn’t move. She waited for a moment, counting his breaths before sighing. “I know you’re awake. I’ve seen you sleep enough on the jet to know when you’re faking, kiddo.”

His head popped out from under the blanket, eyes so darkly shadowed with exhaustion that he looked like he’d been on the losing end of someone’s fists. “I’m not supposed to have visitors,” he told her, voice monotonous and face blank. His eyes skimmed over her even as he spoke, lingering on her abdomen. So. He got to know what was wrong with her while he hid away from them and dealt with his crap on his own. Jerk.

“I’m not a visitor, I’m a patient,” she replied in a snide voice, reaching under the blanket and taking his hand. It was cold, despite the warmth of the room. “And you’re hiding from us.” He blinked a couple of times, and his hand tightened slightly on hers. Her heart twisted to see him like this, curling into himself on the bed as though he was trying to disappear.

“I’m not hiding,” he said, eyes skimming away from her and eyeing the corner of the room with a resigned kind of caution. She fought the urge to check to see if something was there, not wanting him to know she’d seen the involuntary movement. “I’m right here, Henry.”

“Emily,” she corrected him softly, heart spiralling at the small slip up. “You know, psychosis brought on by drugs is temporary, don’t you Spencer? You’re not your mother.”

Reid barked a laugh, sounding more like a hollow cough than anything approaching humour.  “Until last week, I still thought I was stuck in that maze. Until three days ago I was still suffering from aphasia and disordered thoughts. And right now, I only know that you’re _you_ because the hallucinations never touch me. I’m _exactly_ like my mother. All I have is my mind, and he took that from me.”

She realized she was almost crying, blinking back tears before he could see them and accuse her of pitying him. “Don’t push us away, we all went through what you did. Morgan—”

“Hates me.”

She stopped, completely thrown off track by his miserable announcement. “What?”

“He came in to see me. I… I wasn’t good. And he freaked out and left. He hates me. I disgust him. I disgust _myself_.”

“Reid…”

“Please go away. I just… I just want to sleep.”

She left.

 

* * *

 

Reid closed his apartment door firmly behind him. He double checked the lock and chain was on before putting his bag down by the couch and looking about. A layer of dust coated everything, testimony to the month of his life he’d lost to the unsub’s sick games.

Only a month. It could have been so much worse.

He checked the locks on his door again before doing a lap of the apartment and checking all the rooms to make sure they were clear. There was a book face down and open next to the couch, coated in dust, abandoned on the day he’d been taken. The man had crept into his apartment like a mist and taken him out of it, all without leaving a trace of himself behind.

Reid finally stopped himself from obsessively checking the locks and paced out into the silent living room, glancing down at the blinking light of his answering machine. Twenty-seven missed calls. He pulled the phone out of the wall. Removed the battery from his cell and dropped it next to it. Then, he forced himself into the shower.

Running the water as hot as he could physically stand, he stood underneath and watched his skin redden as the water washed away the hospital and the horror and the disgust of his teammates. When he was done, he curled up on the couch under his blankets and squeezed his eyes shut, hair still dripping wet and leaving damp patches on the upholstery. He should call Vegas, tell them he was home, write a letter to his mother. The thought made him ill.

Tomorrow. He’d deal with it all tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

JJ rubbed her eyes hard, the exhaustion of sleepless nights taking their toll on her after a month and a half of Henry’s therapy had failed to make any difference in the daily night-terrors he was suffering from, or the constant panic attacks if she was even out of his sight for minutes. They were beginning to talk about medication, and she was beginning to feel like a failure.

“Miss Jareau?” the receptionist called, looking up and smiling at them brightly. JJ hated her for her cheerfulness and the cleanliness of her life, untouched by serial killers and madmen. “The doc will see you and Henry now.”

The session went like every other, with Henry being a perfectly bright and cheerful boy until any attempt was made by JJ to leave the room, resulting in screams and hyperventilation within seconds. Finally, the therapist pulled her aside as Henry played happily with a toy on the other side of the room. “His godfather, he was captured with you as well?” she asked bluntly. JJ started slightly, unused to talking about what she’d been through with someone other than the psychologist given to her by the bureau. “I know I’m not supposed to talk about this with anyone other than Henry, but this is important.”

“Yes,” JJ answered, holding back the flood of pain at the mention of Spence. She hadn’t seen him since the horrible moment in the middle of the maze when he’d convulsed in her arms and the ambulance had rushed him away. “He was severely injured. Henry hasn’t been able to see him since.”

Morgan had. Emily had. Neither was talking about it. Hotch hadn’t even manage to get in there. She’d seen the panic in their boss’s eyes when he couldn’t. It had only served to scare her more.

The therapist nodded slowly. “I think that’s the root of our problem here. Henry saw his godfather hurt as well as his mom, but when he came out of the hospital, only you were there. He hasn’t actually seen that his godfather is alive and okay. His night terrors, his panic attacks, they’re all caused by fear of the loss of someone he loves. When he’s awake, that’s you. But when he’s asleep…”

“He wakes up screaming for Spencer…” JJ finished, heart sinking. “What if his godfather can’t—won’t—see him? What happens then?”

They both glanced uneasily at her son. “We’ll have to try medication. The exhaustion is starting to affect his health, and yours. If we haven’t gotten a handle on this before the school year begins he could fall behind in his studies.”

Spencer would never forgive himself if Henry falling behind in school could at all be attributed to him. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said finally.

 

* * *

 

“Admit it, Penelope. At this point, you’re staying here for you, not me,” Morgan teased, throwing a pillow at her. She laughed and flushed.

“I can go anytime, sugar, if you get sick of seeing this beautiful face first thing every morning,” she offered, well aware that she may be overstaying her welcome. It had just been over six weeks since their abduction and escape, and Garcia had spent five of them sleeping at Morgan’s house. At first it was to help him recover from the horror of what they’d been through, but after he’d stopped waking up shouting every night and actually started sleeping properly, she’d taken the opportunity to spend a night home instead of in his spare room. It had been her turn to wake up screaming, and he hadn’t said anything when she reappeared, tear-stained and shaking. They all had their scars.

His doorbell rang before he could throw another pillow, and he glanced at her. “Expecting anyone?” he asked, hand floating down to his hip. They were all a little more paranoid now. She shook her head as he made his way down to the door, putting the chain on before opening it. She watched, her throat going dry when she saw him stiffen and slowly unlock the chain before stepping back like he was on death row.

Emily marched in, her smile worn around the edges and dark eyes locked on him intently. “So, it turns out,” she announced, shrugging a bag over her shoulder and hissing as it pulled at her stitches. Morgan reached out and took the bag without a word, frowning slightly at her. “That I can’t reach any of my shelves. Or light switches. Or my cups. Or my shoes or, at the opposite end of the scale, anything on the ground. So, since you shot me, I’m staying here so you can reach all those things for me. Alright?”

There was a beat of silence where her smile might have been a little too forced, and he could have shaken his head and given her the bag back, called her a cab and pointed it towards JJ’s or Hotch’s. Reid’s wasn’t really an option, and Garcia didn’t want to think about that too much because it made her ache like she was hurting somewhere inside.

“Of course,” he said finally, closing the door behind her. “But you’re rooming with Penelope.”

Emily looked startled to see her before smiling in delight, and moving as quickly as her injury would allow, throwing her arms around the other woman. “Sleepover!” she cried, before turning her head so she could whisper into Garcia’s ear. “Operation ‘make Morgan and Reid talk like adults’ is go.”

Penelope grinned, seeing Morgan looking nervous at their collaboration.

They’d have this fixed in a week, tops.

 

* * *

 

Hotch sat next to JJ, both watching out the window as Jack followed Henry around the backyard, hovering anxiously.

“How is he?” JJ asked, sipping at her coffee.

“Still sleeping in my bed more often than not,” Hotch admitted. He almost lifted a hand to rub at the tender skin around his face, but thought better of it. “He’s really overprotective of other kids now. His coach mentioned it to me. He asks about Henry a lot.”

JJ smiled. “He’s a hero, like his dad. He just wants to keep everyone safe.”

“Yes, well… he told me that Henry said to him that Uncle Spence doesn’t want to see him anymore.”

JJ almost choked on her coffee. “It’s nothing Hotch, he’s having a tough time. You know how hard this would have been…”

“For all of us?” Hotch suggested, standing and flicking the kettle on to refill his cup. “Not just Reid. We all suffered in there, and suffering apart isn’t doing us any good.”

JJ’s voice turned dark when she replied. “Try telling Spence that.”

“I did. Sort of. Which is why he’s coming here today, theoretically to talk about when we’re going to be reinstated to the BAU. I thought I’d tell you now so you don’t have a chance to leave.”

JJ stood, opening her mouth to say something, but the doorbell rung and cut her off. Hotch set down the third cup he’d gotten out, twitched an eyebrow in her direction, and went to answer it. Reid didn’t look as bad as he’d expected him to look when he opened the door to him, but he didn’t look at the peak of his health either. He looked very much how the rest of them looked: like he’d crawled through hell and somehow come out relatively unscathed on the other side.

“JJ’s here,” were the first words out of Reid’s mouth when Hotch greeted him. Followed by a surly, “You set me up.”

Hotch noted that the man looked neither surprised nor upset by this. “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped trying to protect us from what we don’t need protecting from?” Hotch asked him dryly.

“Like what?”

“You.”

Reid blinked and rocked back on his heels, speechless for once, when suddenly a hurricane of screaming limbs whirled past Hotch and attached itself to Reid’s hip, almost sending him flying. One look at the sobbing, snotty mess that was the hysterical Henry, and Reid instantly lost every trace of the standoffish man who’d stood glaring on Hotch’s stoop. He dropped to his knees, gathering the boy into a tight hug and pulling him close, his eyes wide and shocked.

“He needs you, Spence,” JJ said, coming up behind Hotch and blinking back tears at the sight of the two of them. “We all do.”

Reid nodded and scooped Henry up, carrying him inside like he never wanted to let go again.

 

* * *

 

Rossi raised his glass in a call for silence, the warm bubble of happiness in his chest attributed more to the smiling faces around him rather than the alcohol.

“I think congratulations is in order for Dr. Reid, who passed his evaluations today and is to be fully reinstated next week to the BAU!” he announced, laughing when the medley of drinks were held up in a toast, right from Morgan’s beer to Reid’s chocolate milk in a thin-stemmed wine glass.

“Now we just need you to return from the land of Never-ending Paperwork and everything will be back to normal,” Hotch pestered him as he sat back down.

“Once I get cleared for the field again, who will do all your paperwork though, Aaron?” Rossi elbowed him in the side gently.

“Reid needs the practise,” Hotch replied with a slight twitch of his mouth. “Or Morgan. I’m sure one of them will take the blow.”

Rossi heard a loud shout of laughter, and looked down the table just in time to see Reid tumble off his seat in a controlled fall and taking the wildly giggling Henry with him. Jack swivelled his head around sharply, tension leeching out of his shoulders when he saw that it was Reid who had Henry pinned down and was tickling him, and not someone who meant them harm. Morgan chattered cheerfully with Emily and JJ, the latter with only half her attention on her son for once instead of all of it. She was almost relaxed. Rossi watched carefully as Reid reclaimed his seat and glanced over to smile awkwardly at Morgan. There was still the slight barrier of whatever had happened between them there. Rossi knew it would fade away fast once they got back in the field together.

Three months on from that moment when they all woke up in those cells and plunged into a nightmare, and they were healing. Battered and scarred and hurt, but healing.

Garcia cleared her throat and held her own glass in the air. “To our team,” she called out in the most serious voice Rossi had ever heard her use.

“To our team,” they all chorused, even Will and the two snickering boys. It was a comfort to Rossi that try as he might, the unsub hadn’t done the one thing he had wanted. He hadn’t broken them.

And if he hadn’t managed it, no one ever would.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
